Hail Farewell
by aFlanigan
Summary: A young agent of Hydra is determined she's doing the right thing, but what happens when she meets the team? They want to recruit her, but she's been ordered to take them down. Can they help her overcome years of brainwashing and the horrors of her past? They're going to try.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"Again, faster," my S.O. commanded. The older woman motioned angrily, and several burly men stepped back into the room carrying fake weapons. "Do you even understand your job? If you're not effective, the whole agency is in danger."

"Yes Ma'am," I responded, rolling my shoulders and cracking my neck.

"Don't waste my time," she ordered.

Taking a deep breath, I launched into action, sliding under the table, kicking out one man. With a handspring, I grabbed his fallen knife and threw it at the man trying to shoot me. The remaining three converged, one trying to shoot as I rolled over a couch. I had no weapons, so i kicked out a leg of the end table and used that to bludgeon the first man brave or stupid enough to come around the side. Holding him against me as a shield, i took out the shooter, and a few good hits were enough for the last guy, sadly armed with only a bat, which was too heavy to move as fast as I did. Shaking the blood off my hand, i looked to Agent Crosby, knowing only the opinion of my supervising officer mattered. And unluckily for me, my old one had gone undercover and left me with this crusty jerk.

"You're all dismissed." Crosby commanded the men, who all still lay on the ground. A second team of workers stepped in, also bruised and bloodied, and dragged them out of sight, grief slashing across their faces when there wasn't a pulse to be found. I couldn't help but feel a little bad that two of them were dead, but I hid that as best I could. "For years we've trained you, yes? personally , I still wouldn't have you in the field, with the amount of money we've spent on you we can't risk you dying before you've paid your dues." She glared down at me, forcing me to draw myself up to my full height, which wasn't much.

"I was under the impression I'd already proved myself and advanced to a full rank field agent after Dakar last year." I stood still, avoiding her eyes. Any sign of insolence and she'd have me back in boot camp. Crosby stared hard, trying to bore into my head. Seconds passed in silence, and i couldn't help but feel victorious. If there's one thing my old S.O. taught me, it's being whoever I need to be, only letting what I choose show on my face. He was the expert in espionage.

"Why are you here?" she finally asked, making my head swim with relief.

"I want to make the world a better place. To do that i need to eliminate those who are making the problems. I don't matter, but this organization does. I'll give my life to protect it and help it stay strong, so it can do all the good it does for the world." Crosby looked dissatisfied with my answer, and I wondered if i should have said part of the science side's manifesto as well.

"You'll receive orders soon enough, until then you will carry on your schedule as usual. Do not mistake me, Agent Frederick, this is no promotion, you're simply being allowed to remain on field duty." My heart leapt, despite the bitter taste of her calling me Frederick. My old S.O. had called me Jamie, my first name, because he was my friend. Crosby and I were nothing more than associates, which made me miss him, but maybe on field duty i could actually see him again. "You're espionage division primarily, but as usual the command of any higher officer holds, and any can take you on missions if you're not specifically assigned to one at that time."

"Yes Ma'am. Hail Hydra."

"Hail Hydra."

"Remember, cover your six. SHIELD is still out there, no matter how fragmented, and we're not the only ones with sources," Agent Crosby reminded me needlessly through the coms. "We need this one to continue our work on the obelisk."

I ducked into the stairwell so i could respond without the cameras seeing. "So he's recovered it?" i asked, hushed with reverence. The Obelisk was something we'd dreamed about for years, and searched for since long before I was born, but I'd always thought it was a myth. Until it turned up again a few months ago, and this time we had a shot at it. Its incredible power still seemed unreal to me.

"Get moving Agent Frederick. And yes, we've sent Creel after it," she responded, knowing closure was the best way to draw my focus back to the mission. Not that it was difficult, but the Girl Scout uniform and cart of cookies was one of my least favorite outfit, since it made concealing any weapons damn near impossible to be reached quickly. I usually looked older than I probably was, but not with the makeup they'd done. I stepped quickly down the hall, arranging my face to be the picture of innocence, with just a twinge of teenage awkwardness.

A quick knock revealed a messy man in his late twenties or early thirties, disheveled but holding himself like he was ready for a fight. He was decently in shape, but that wasn't what worried me. Everything about him _screamed_ powers, from the way he stood down to the look in his eyes.

"Good morning sir, I was just wondering if you wanted to buy some cookies. They changed the brand, but they're still delicious, and of course the Thin Mints haven't changed." I gave my most convincing giggle and he relaxed, opening the door wider and letting me in.

"It's just me and my daughter, so we don't need many, but I could never say no to Girl Scout cookies. How about two boxes of tagalongs and a Thin Mint?" He reached for his wallet, rummaging in his pockets.

"Get the daughter too," Agent Crosby whispered in my ear. "Radar alert a mile from your location, do it now Agent Frederick."

I pulled the gun from my waistband, aiming at his leg as i scanned for the kid.

"Ah, here it-" He stopped in his tracks, seeing the gun. Slowly putting his hands in the air, he threw a desperate glance down the hall, probably for the girl. "What's going on?" His voice trembled. "Here, if you want the money just take it and leave us alone!"

"I've heard a little rumor about you, and I want it confirmed." I stepped forward, steering him so I would be closer to his daughter.

"Are you with SHIELD? My caseworker was supposed to check in months ago." He waited in silence for a few moments as I tried not to pistol whip him for even suggesting such a thing. "Please, I'm not dangerous. I cleaned up for my daughter, I don't fight anymore!"

He panicked, launching himself by me down the hallway. Sighing, I squeezed the trigger, shooting him in the leg at point blank range. He fell, but no hole or blood appeared. Standing, he ran down the hall, throwing open a door and making a child scream. Unfortunately for him i was right on his heels, slipping into the room after him and shutting the door behind us.

"Kid, get in the closet. I don't want her to see this." i waited for her to obey before circling him, guard up. "Impervious to gunfire, huh? I bet I can still find a way to make you bleed."

"You're on." He launched, but I ducked sideways, using his forward momentum to shove him headlong into a wall. He rebounded fast, faking and snapping a kick to my stomach. I laughed a little. He was such a _boxer._ I ducked in close, kneeing him and grabbing his arm, using the wall to send me behind and over him, cracking his elbow the wrong way and making him bellow. His daughter's cries became audible through the door, and I knew we'd have police in a few minutes. I flipped him, knocking all the wind out of his lungs. He jumped up as fast as he could, but leaned back on the bedroom door. I roundhoused him squarely in the chest, putting him through the door. We didn't get up from that one. The little girl came out of the closet, wailing loud enough I knew the neighbors were definitely calling the police.

"Hey kiddo, what's your name?" I asked her, but she slid away. A glance at her wall showed me her name was Anna.

"Anna if you don't get quiet right now I'm going to kill your father. Hush. Now come with me." She obliged, following me through the empty frame to where her father lay. He looked pretty intact, but the impact seemed to have really affected him. "Don't say a word. Move or she dies."

"She's five years old, Goddammit! Please!" he cried out, but he stood and followed me. I held his daughter's hand and she shook with fear.

"Crosby, how close are you?" I asked my earpiece, knowing that the aircraft had probably arrived. Just as I finished my sentence the door was kicked down, and SHIELD agents burst in. Pushing the other two back, I returned their fire, seeing the first two fall and narrowly missing getting killed.

"Have a car waiting at the fire escape!" I yelled to my earpiece, shoving both father and daughter out the window. Even one handed the man climbed fast, and the girl kept pace. We reached the bottom quickly, screeching into the van as bullets pinged off the doors and windows.

"It's going to be okay, Annie, daddy's here, I won't let anything happen to you." He cradled her to his chest, but she pushed away. He turned to me, watching as I scrubbed the makeup off, tucking my hair into its usual knotted braid. I yanked off the sash and shirt, revealing my bulletproof vest and weapons beneath. "Who are you? Why is SHIELD still after me? I thought you were gone."

I leaned forward a bit, tapping my gun casually, hoping to scare him into a confession. He put an arm around Anna, and this time she let him.

"SHIELD?" she asked in her little voice. "Are you a superhero?"

She leaned in, now unafraid.

"This is about the other night isn't it? I swear, I didn't mean to kill him. I thought SHIELD was gone! We were desperate, so I thought it would be okay to do this one fight." He looked miserable, and his daughter pulled away from him fast. She bounced over, coming to rest right beside me.

"Daddy no!" she cried. I reached out instinctively, squeezing her little shoulders. She turned to me, crying, but not trusting me so much either. "You're a superhero?"

"Nope. I'm no more than you could be Anna. I'm a normal girl who trained hard, every day, so I can stop bad people from hurting good people." I gave her a quick flash of smile as she dried her eyes.

"Annie, don't believe her. You know your daddy is a good guy. The guy I hurt wasn't good baby, he was a mean, bad man." He was desperate, and we could both see it. Anna looked between us, afraid and confused. Luckily the car stopped before her father could say more. The door opened and the man was dragged out, bag over his head and handcuffed. Two brutes reached for Anna but I motioned for them to leave her alone. I stepped out, and she followed, more awed than afraid. She looked around the base, mouth hanging open, struggling to comprehend the beehive-like structure, with people swarming all throughout.

Crosby marched up, giving me a warning look as Doctor Whitehall joined her in the approach.

"Agent Frederick." He said seriously, and I wondered how he knew my name.

"Hail Hydra!" I saluted, and he nodded for me to continue. "Father and daughter recovered sir."

I knelt beside Anna, turning her to look me in the eye.

"You're going to go with this Agent, alright? I have to report to these people, but I'll come check on you." She nodded, following the woman away until she was out of earshot. "Father appears to be surface invincible, but not immune to pressure. A heavy hit will hurt him, but not break his skin. Daughter thinks we're SHIELD, but she trusts me enough I'm starting to convince her her dad is a bad guy."

"Good work. I hear you have a background in biology and anatomy?" He peered at me through his round little glasses.

"Yes sir, and some chemistry. I was trained in both science and field work so I would be guaranteed acceptance to at least one of the SHIELD academies," I responded, standing stock still. I hated lab work, but I knew this wasn't the kind of man you said no too.

"That won't be necessary. You're assigned to me, effective now. Tomorrow we'll be in the lab, but we're still missing one piece of the genetic puzzle. Bring me the mother."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The drive to Ruth Thompson's house was barely long enough to change into my plain black uniform. My driver kept an eye on the rear view the entire time, so when we arrived I was ready to bust some heads.

"Keep the car running. We have no reason to believe she's powered; I should be back in a few minutes," I told him, glad I was finally back to a high enough rank I could get this creep demoted to cleaning toilets when we got back. I could feel his eyes on me as I got out of the car and wished I had a less flattering uniform. I was used to skin tight, but this actually gave me shape. Whitehall had given it to me right before I left, and the fabric was stiffer and heavier than my old one, but it had tens of concealed pockets for storing weapons, so it wasn't so bad.

I spied an open side window, and rolled in before any of her neighbors had time to notice me. It was a little office, unimportant and unoriginal, so I crept over to the door to listen for the woman.

"Keep an eye out, that SHIELD team is probably looking for her too." A new voice whispered into my earpiece. "Orders changed. Grab the woman and send her back to base, return alone to James Beck's apartment and search it."

An hour later I stood in the window of an apartment across the street from Anna's room. Just as I remembered, it stood open. This family was horrible with security. I threw my hook, catching a window ledge above it and swinging easily over the road, tearing through the screen and landing quietly on her thick pink carpet. I picked my way over the smashed door, through the hall and into his bedroom. A quick search revealed nothing- no hidden compartments, no wall panels my equipment could detect, nothing in the mattress, floor, or closet. I decided whatever I was looking for wasn't there, and slipped into the living room. Which was crawling with SHIELD agents.

The room was a grey honeycomb design, and it seemed tough enough. I'd have to tell everyone when I got back that SHIELD was much stronger than we'd been anticipating. I wondered idly if this was my old S.O.'s team, though the odds were slim, and decided against asking as Phil Coulson walked in. it was strangely flattering, knowing the boss himself had come to question me, but I kept my face neutral, almost bored looking.

"Hello, Philip." I let my annoyance ooze out as he sat, wishing I could break my restraints and just kill him and leave.

"Hayden Emily Brown. That's your name, isn't it?" He plopped a file down on the table between us, fanning out the papers within. My transcripts, school ID, pictures of me, it documented my entire life. At least, the life Hydra had made available for them to see. "We were looking to recruit you when you finished college. Seems someone else got their first. Are you centipede? Hydra? Mercenary?"

"Sounds like you've got bigger problems than me, with enemies like that." I looked him right in the eye, making sure to give him no clues.

"I had my team do some research, and it turns out there was no Hayden Emily Brown on file, at least not until four years ago. Yet these papers seem like you've been trying to get yourself recruited for your whole life. My best guess, Hydra took you out of a bad situation when you were fourteen or fifteen, drew you in with the usual promises. They gave you food, shelter, a family, and all you had to do in return was kill whoever they asked. Sound about right?" I had to clench to keep from fidgeting, he was so close to the truth. "What were you looking for in his apartment?"

"Didn't you hear? Someone kidnapped that man, and his little daughter too," I sneered, sitting back lazily like I was falling asleep. A muscle ticked in his jaw, and I knew I was getting under his skin.

"I did know. Police recovered the girl's body about twenty minutes ago, shoved in a trashcan in an alley."

A lead weight dropped on my heart. "That makes no sense, " I whispered to myself, then quickly rearranged my face back to casual. Even that had been too much emotion to show, even though he didn't hear me. Something flickered behind his eyes, and it almost looked like he pitied me.

"The necessary sacrifices must be made to ensure our future. Hydra is willing to make those sacrifices, while SHIELD flounders in their love for one man."

"Yeah, because that didn't sound like a manifesto. What i still don't understand is why it was necessary. Risking yourself to go back for the woman made us think it was some kind of genetic research, and with a powered father, you're probably trying to learn whether powers are passed on."

"That's above my paygrade." A soft voice issued from his ear, meaning he was on coms with someone. "What'd your friend have to say?"

"My team has been through alot lately, and I don't appreciate you making things harder for them. I"ve got something to handle right now, but someone will be back. And for your sake, I hope you'll talk to her." Coulson almost smiled as he left, much more evilly than I'd ever pictured.

After a few hours, I was just about done with sitting still. The straps burned my wrists where I'd tried to twist them away, and the cold in the room made my toes and fingers almost numb. The discomfort was making me extra waspish, and I was ready to pull someone apart. Sadly I didn't get the chance, since they gassed me before transport. I woke up quickly, being carried down a dark corridor. Listening, I figured it was only one man, pushing me on a cart and humming.

Before he even realized I was conscious, I'd backflipped over his head and behind him, putting him in a sleeper hold. The chubby man, Kanig, by the look of his lanyard, didn't even have a chance to call for help, and I sort of felt bad for him. Shaking that off, I dragged him down the nearest stairway, taking off his lanyard and draping it over my own neck.

The cart had a bum wheel which left scuffs every few feet, giving me an easy path through the base into a large hangar, where an incredibly large plane rested. I barely had time to duck back as cars screeched in, and agents unloaded a hooded, struggling man, who I could tell was General Talbot, who SHIELD had previously worked with on occasion. Which explained why they had to move me.

A man walked toward me in fatigues, rolling his eyes and giving a jaunty wave over his shoulder to the Asian woman barking orders. The man moved overly confidently, and definitely had military training, and I could tell at a glance that the woman wasn't someone I wanted to mess with. I steadied my breathing like my S.O. taught me and slipped back into the shadows as the man passed. He didn't suspect a thing, and I finished my escape with almost comedic ease.

Until I got hit by a car.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

I'd been shot three times, burned once, and hit and broken more times than I could ever dream of counting, but nothing compared to smashing the front bumper of a Ford doing 60. I groaned, fighting to stay conscious. The truck screeched away, leaving me to crawl slowly and painfully off to the side of the road. My whole body felt like it was being burned from the inside out, except my left leg, which was too numb to send the waves of shock and pain rolling again and again into my brain. Eventually they dragged me under, despite my best efforts, and I blacked out.

I moaned, the only sound except steady beeping in a room of medical machines. A man immediately slid down next to my bed. It was Ama, one of the two people in the entire world I considered a friend. He was a dark, heavy set man with no physical talents to speak of, but he was the one who oversaw my education since I'd been here, and over the years we'd grown close. When I was young it'd been mostly lectures on biology and chemistry and the workings of computers and other technology, but recently we mostly just talked and had tea.

"Jesus, Jamie, they're talking about putting you down. You have to talk them out of it, you know they won't listen to me. They think you're not useful anymore, but who will I talk to if you're gone?" I struggled to keep my pulse steady, so we'd have more time alone. It was widely known that though he was a genius, Ama was completely incapable of keeping a secret. That was good for my education, but they'd probably be pulling him out soon enough in case he told me I was scheduled to die. "I'm sure you can handle it fine on your own and I'm not any help. You're as smart as me, and you can fight. I'm sorry, I'll just leave you alone." His faith in me was reassuring, but currently misplaced. I could barely move, much less fight.

I needed someone I really trusted to help me, I needed not to be afraid to die, I did my job, the agency was safe and I'd helped its research, but I was scared. It was shameful, but I needed my S.O., I needed him to tell me to be a good agent and put my duty before myself, but he was either dead or captured and I was on my own. My heart felt like it was pumping tar, black ooze contaminating my body and mind. I was used to being alone, but not like this, knowing the people I cared about weren't going to help me no matter what. I'd always had someone in my corner, but for the first time it was just me, standing alone against pain and desperation.

Tears prickled the backs of my eyes, so I closed them and counted slowly to ten and back again until the pressure ceased. I had to handle it on my own. So I would.

After maybe an hour of trying to hype myself up to die with grace, Whitehall stepped in, flanked by two guards, and sized up my injuries. He obviously didn't like what he saw, and my heart did a rebellious little jumping jack in my chest. I took deep breaths instinctively, my body getting ready to fight even though my mind told it to shut up and accept our fate.

"Hail Hydra," I croaked as best I could. He responded in kind. "Sir, I just want you to know this is entirely temporary. I'll be back in the field as soon as I can, and as soon as I can stand I'll work in the lab. I can-"

"I'm well aware of your abilities Agent Frederick. I commissioned the program which found you and oversaw your training. Our response to the Black Widow program, and it produced you. Your skills have been severely under utilized." Whitehall paused for a moment to dismiss the guards, taking the recording device from the one.

"Yes sir, Doctor, I agree." He held up a hand, and I fell silent.

"Are you even aware of the extent of your injuries?" He plucked a clipboard off the end of the bed, flipping through the papers and raising an eyebrow. "Shattered hip, four broken ribs, severe spinal damage, major tissue damage to both arms. Not to mention infinite smaller pains. I'm afraid you're no longer useful."

"I have information. I saw the inside of their base, where it was. And I met Phil Coulson. As long as I can talk I'll still be of use." I'd forgotten how much information I had, and before I died the organization needed it. Maybe it could help save my S.O., or maybe they'd even let me start looking for him if my information was good. I quickly described everything I'd seen, numbers, artillery, size of the base, the SSR symbols on the walls. I didn't see any road signs outside it, so I didn't know specifically it's location, but I didn't doubt I'd be able to find out.

"Then they're somewhere in the Continental United States." He spoke like he already knew, but I could tell he needed my information by the way he leaned in and hung on my every word.

"Yes." A huge yawn overtook me, and I knew if he made me set up the program now it'd be ineffective at finding them. To make him go away, I feigned exhaustion, leaning back and letting my eyelids droop. "Do I have access to information regarding the family I brought you earlier?"

"Yes. We thought perhaps, if the obelisk revealed itself to exemplary people, that power may be passed on. The man had the power, and the woman did not." Whitehall looked at me expectantly.

"So if the obelisk revealed itself to the daughter, it would prove that superhuman abilities can be genetic." I reasoned, winning a nod from the Doctor.

"Discovery requires experimentation. Sadly, we have lost the obelisk, and with it the power to experiment. Carl Creel has, however, become infected, and we've had each in turn touch the area. The mother was turned to stone, but both father and daughter survived. Creel was soon after captured by the very team that had you." I nodded along, turning it over in my head. So Anna wasn't dead after all. The thought brought me comfort, despite my training against compassion.

"So it's genetic," I responded, my interest peaked. We were basically the only ones researching powered people, so every bit of it was new and unprecedented. Someone once told me the fatal flaw of mankind would be our thirst for knowledge. It was the reason Hydra was created, to advance our understanding of everything around us. "It's incredible. All of history focuses on ostracizing what is different and terminating it. Hydra seems the only intelligent part of this species, focusing on knowledge. Gaining knowledge, and putting it to good use."

"And SHIELD is the other side of that coin, seeking only to keep the truth from the light. They've been tracking down members of Rising Tide. few are ever heard from again." He watched me intently, and I realized what he was doing. Before a higher ranking agent dies, they're consulted on many important matters.

"They call themselves Hacktivists, it makes sense. SHIELD wants to put an end to free thought and unrestricted information, the two things the Rising Tide stands for most." I heard my heart monitor picking up like crazy, and took deep calming breaths. It made me so angry, that people could still support SHIELD after all they'd done. Ex-Director Fury was the master of secrets, and he'd trained all his people to hoard information that way. Yet many American people still believed they protected freedom. "Have we done anything to protect them? I could- well, I guess I can't actually help there. But we should at least check up on the ones most important to us."

"I disagree- you can help here. According to Agent Ama, you surpassed all your instructors but him in programming years ago. Set me up a program which builds a hierarchy, and sends the necessary number of agents to protect each." He bent down, pulling a laptop from beneath the hospital bed. "You have four hours before your drip needs refilling. I suggest you be finished."

•It took me longer since I passed out soon after he left, and had to design the program after I'd woken up. I ached all the way down to my bones by the time I finished, and forced them to restore my morphine before sending over the work. The pain went away, but the memory of it stayed with me even as the morphine fuzzed out my brain.

I just wanted to sleep. My thoughts were as sluggish as my body, so difficult to string words into a sentence. The morphine. Even my remaining piece of a brain could figure out the problem. They were killing me nicely, like a thank you for the program.

Some sort of survival instinct must have taken over, because in the next moment I'd ripped the needle out of my skin and stabbed a shot of adrenaline from the counter directly into my vein. My heart sped up wildly, slowly clearing my brain. I still hadn't shown them my information for finding the SHIELD base. I struggled to move toward the door, my body giving out.

My chest heaved too heavily for me to yell, and I suspected I had lung damage. Air refused to pump through my body, and I tried not to curl up in a ball. I fought for air, trying, fighting not to die.

All I remember about the next few days is pain, every limb and muscle feeling like it was being liquified and reformed with hammers over and over. Or maybe I was burning, slowly roasting over a fire without end. I swam in and out of consciousness, but something was over my eyes and my limbs were strapped down. The table seemed metal, like those in the lab, but when I woke I was back in a hospital bed.

"Doctor?" I called out. The blindfold was annoying, but my arms were strapped down, preventing me from removing it. "Hello?"

"Take a deep breath."

What? No. No no no.

"Clear your mind."

I will fight it. I won't be one of your mindless robots.

"Your compliance will be rewarded."

My tension eased, mind settling in to the way it was supposed to be.

"Are you ready to comply?"

For the first time in my life, my soul felt at peace.

"Happy to comply."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Doctor Whitehall explained he'd always wanted a second in command, but he could never run the risk of trusting someone with so much power and information, except me. And not just because he could control me, since he usually left me alone and only gave me orders as a failsafe when I wasn't strong enough to make myself do whatever it was. I resented the control a little, but I understood the need to have it.

I opened the lab door extra carefully. I'd accidentally ripped a few doors off their hinges when I first joined Whitehall. They'd given me an updated and entirely internal version of Deathlok tech, replacing everything in my body that was ruined with far more efficient machines. I had access to files telling me what it all was, but most of it was written so scientifically I only understood about one tenth of it. Technology wasn't really my strong suit, and without Ama's help anything new seemed like an alien language.

I bent over the computer, still open to my program. My hair swept over the keyboard, thanks to one of the bugs they hadn't worked out yet my hair had grown from choppy pixie cut to shoulder length in the time since I'd woken from the surgery, which was probably no more than a week or two.

"Hail Hydra." Whitehall entered, pulling on a lab coat and gloves. I responded, but didn't look up from the program, which for some reason still wasn't working. I really didn't _understand_ coding, I'd just memorized what Ama told me and worked it out from there, but I'd been given an order I wasn't planning on asking for help on. "The program will wait, but bodies decay."

Taking the hint, I grabbed my own lab coat, gloves, and goggles, following him into the back section of the lab. Yesterday had been unusually unpleasant, since I'd been given hourly compliance to make me trustworthy enough to lead the experiment. Today though I was just an assistant. All I had to do was practice with my scanners and try to detect anything unusual.

"The clock is ticking Agent Frederick, and we have nothing. There has been nothing unusual about any of them, nothing we can detect. And we only have one subject left to study." A door popped open in the opposite wall and rough hands shoved in a tiny form. The figure crumpled against the wall. My heart constricted when I recognized the red hair and green eyes amidst the muck.

"Anna?" Her little face lifted toward me, quivering shoulders coathanger thin. She crouched like a cat and hissed, poised to spring until Whitehall stepped out from behind me. All the fight went out of her, fear making her cling to the wall, eyes bugging out.

"Please don't make me rock please I'm not like mommy I won't be like mommy. Mommy is dead. Don't make me like Mommy!" The kid had gone feral from whatever they'd been doing to her. Poor baby must have had to watch her mother be subjected to the obelisk. It was all so wrong, my head and stomach were spinning in a frenzy. She was just a kid. I turned on Whitehall, enraged.

"Take a deep breath." The words washed over me. Fighting did no good as he completed the reset.

"Happy to comply." It wasn't me, but it sure as hell came out of my mouth.

"Complete the experiment Agent Frederick. Dispose of the body when you finish." With that, Whitehall left me alone.

My hands moved to tie her down. Screaming didn't help, punching, kicking, tearing out my hair, my body wouldn't obey the commands of my mind.

I watched, trapped, as my hands stroked a scalpel.

A few hours later, my shattered brain was my own again. At least, I thought it was. It terrified me how quickly, without even noticing, lost the ability to tell.

My body started listening to me again when I got back to my bunk, and I hurriedly tried to clean the blood off my face where it splattered. It was well known that Whitehall was the one pulling my strings, so I carried with me his full authority, which meant I could ask anyone for help. But they'd ask whose blood it was, and if I answered I'd break down and they'd call him to reset me.

The program was running on the end of my bed. I sighed, seeing it wasn't scanning. Until I got closer, and saw it was. It had just stopped when it found the place.

 _Default directive._

And my body wasn't my own again. I looked on as my feet stepped quickly to the nearest armory. It didn't make any sense, I thought as my hands stocked up on weapons. Why wouldn't Whitehall have me tell him when I found SHIELD? For some reason I was doing everything myself.

I broke into the SHIELD base almost two hours later. The outer door was too easy, and I tried to warn my body it was about to be discovered. Of course, it wasn't obeying my commands anymore, and agents flanked us as soon as we opened the inner door. And we were back in the cell soon enough.

A woman stepped in, and I almost didn't recognize her blonde. She clearly recognized me too, rechecking whatever it said on her tablet and discarding it by the door.

"You're the Shadow." She sat down across from me, pushing over a bottle of water, which I ignored. "Obviously that's not your real name. But neither is Hayden, right?"

"Hail Hydra." I answered once I realized I wasn't on autopilot anymore.

"Actually, no. I was undercover, but that was weeks ago." How hadn't I heard about something as big as chief of security being a traitor? I tried to cover my confusion, but she was good. "How long has it been since you were captured? The first time."

"A week or two, but you should already know that Agent Morse. I already know my way out, so what's your grand plan for stopping me from escaping again? This time with the information I need. I got past you all last time practically in my sleep." I was rubbed the wrong way by her calling me that stupid name Hydra came up with, but I tried not to let her under my skin. She was still looking at me critically.

"Why did they spend so much money outfitting you, only to send you right back to us? Our equipment tells us you've got about two million dollars of tech in you, but last time you were fully human. What changed?"

"Got hit by a car." I wanted to add a snide _because I could track your secret base and oop! Look where I am._ but something stopped me. And then I understood my default directive. I was supposed to be caught. I wasn't a trojan horse, I was a mole.

3rd person POV

"Doctor Whitehall, Agent Frederick has left the base." The young agent averted his eyes, fearing Whitehall as much as he respected him.

"Good. So her program found something?" He looked pleased.

"Sir, she wiped the servers before she left." Whitehall turned slowly to face the cowering man.

"Then either the program malfunctioned, or the girl did. Cancel her directive, find her, get the information, and kill her."

I'd been trained for years to work within SHIELD. I finally had my chance, and it wasn't what I'd expected at all. A really nice British scientist came twice a day to measure my brainwaves and tell me about "What they'd done to me." I didn't believe her that Hydra had been brainwashing me since I was a kid until she showed me the scans, and let me scan my own brain to see the difference. Her partner, who was also surprisingly young for SHIELD, also ranked in the top five sweetest people I'd ever met. He came in to assess the machinery in me. For some reason he trusted me and gave me constant updates with what they were learning. Apparently about half of it was prototype, synthetic organs and tissues to replace what was ruined, and weapons built in, mostly in my arms. All of it was wired carefully so I had full control, which seemed exceedingly ironic. After a few days he started teaching me which motions activated which weapons. He, Agent Fitz, promised to send Agent Morse back in to teach me how to use the targeting systems.

I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if I'd known SHIELD first. But Hydra had already taught me the truth, which I had to remind myself on an almost hourly basis here. It felt blasphemous to even think, but they didn't seem like crazy evil secret keepers. But maybe this was just the front they put on to hide the truth. SHIELD was dedicated to stopping the spread of information. At least, I thought so. Until they gave me internet access. When we took down SHIELD, Black Widow, who I'd been told was the worst of them all, had released all of their restricted files to the public. It didn't make any sense.

"What?" I was in a new cell with much better lighting, so I could see Agent Simmons's interest peaked as she bent over the desk I sat on, staring at my most recent brain scans. My head throbbed from the little stickies on my temples, but I was used to it by now. If I showed any sign of pain she would remove them and leave, so I sat perfectly still, finding myself dreading that.

"Oh, nothing." She tried to give me a smile, but she knew I saw right through it. "I've been using this new technology Mr. Stark designed to look into past brain activity."

She quickly explained that it could theoretically scan years of my brain's history. I felt oddly ashamed at the idea of them seeing all my thoughts, but I knew that wasn't how this worked. Still. I wanted to know the truth of why I joined Hydra, I needed to know whether they'd forced me. And in return I could learn why they joined SHIELD. It petrified me how much I was beginning to understand. It didn't add up. Hydra told me SHIELD was an organization built on keeping secrets and suppressing the rights of the people. But SHIELD didn't seem bad at all. They took me in and spent so much time and money just to help me, despite knowing I was their enemy. I was getting really confused. They fed me all I wanted, I had a nice bed with really warm blankets that they cleaned for me, they gave me wipes to clean my uniform when I refused to take it off, and they weren't making me work for any of it. That's just not how the real world works. The truth was probably somewhere between what the organizations were telling me, and I needed both full stories to find it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

The day after I asked Agent Simmons for more information there was a file waiting on my computer. Apparently she'd passed on my request to Director Phil Coulson himself, and he'd put me together a packet. He promised no lies, and I actually believed him. There was no reason for them to lie at this point. And it couldn't have come from anyone else, since their system was soooooo well protected. We, Hydra, hadn't been able to break in since before SHIELD fell, and even that was because we were invited in. I had to read it over three times for everything to sink in. Hydra had been lying to me. Everything I did for them was for nothing. I wasn't saving the world from evil overlords, SHIELD was the same as Hydra. I'd been lied to by the one person in the world I cared about.

They sent a new girl when I started punching the walls.

"Agent Simmons?" I looked up from the laptop. A tan, sort of Asian looking woman stepped in. She looked a little older than Agent Simmons, but not by much, and way less sure of herself.

"I'm Skye." She sat on the floor in front of my mattress and handed me an ice pack, presumably for my hands. "You know, Simmons would really appreciate it if you'd stop hurting yourself. She's worried about you."

I recognized her voice, but I couldn't decide where from. It was soothing though, which just made me feel worse.

"I also brought a better blanket. And some water. I've been in here, I know it sucks." She placed both down in front of me, but I pulled farther back. I still wasn't sure she wouldn't attack, although she seemed pretty non threatening. But so did I, when I wanted to.

"Why would you help me? I'm- I was- I mean, I'm an agent of Hydra."

"That wasn't you. Hydra was controlling you. You're the victim here."

"I'm no victim. I joined willingly. Everything I did, _I_ did." I tried to stare her down, but she just drew herself up taller. Skye wasn't leaving, apparently no matter how much I hinted that I wanted her to.

"How long ago did you join?"

"I have no idea. What year is it?"

"What?" She looked genuinely shocked, and I told her I hadn't had even a clock except on missions, much less a calendar. It had been almost six years. That's it. Jesus. I couldn't help but laugh, until tears leaked from my eyes. That made me… fifteen. Maybe not even. I was fifteen years old, and I probably deserved to be killed. If I'd kidnapped someone who did to me what I'd done to SHIELD, I'd've tortured them. But SHIELD doesn't torture people. "Why hasn't SHIELD killed me yet?"

"SHIELD's been known to turn threats into assets." _The asset._ The word was a name. A man with a metal arm pulling me from a firefight I had no business being in. Him wading in to finish it for me, so I wouldn't get hurt. Lightless eyes. "I was a member of the Rising Tide."

"That's why I know your voice. How did you end up in SHIELD? They're the authority on information hoarding. Literally." She laughed a little, nodding.

"SHIELD under Fury was corrupt, but Coulson's Director now. He's a really good guy, and because of that so is SHIELD. This SHIELD follows the original founding ideal. Protection. We try to protect people, because to us everyone is worth saving." Even me. I could see the unsaid ending in her eyes.

Protection. The simplicity of it amazed me. I was terrified of how much it spoke to me.

"Not everyone is worth saving. But I'd die for those who are." Uncoiling my legs, I took a swing of the water. Skye obviously agreed with me, nodding so small I doubt the cameras could tell. "We don't always have to agree with our agencies. Hydra wasn't exactly into personal loyalty."

Guilt stabbed through me, remembering how much trouble I got into for putting people before agency. Skye reached toward me, but I flinched back. A trainer hitting me when I was so small, chaining me to a wall and slashing a whip on my back, laughing about how he was making me tougher. Why hadn't I remembered that before? Why did they hide that from me?

"Hey, hey." Skye looked helplessly into the camera. I could barely hear her over the pounding of my heart, but I pulled myself together as fast as possible. In a snap I was back to normal, which seemed to freak her out even more than my breakdown.

"I'm fine, it's nothing," I immediately responded, trying to clear my head. It was just training, just teaching me to be strong since I was such a weak recruit. They had to build me up from nothing and that took extreme measures, whippings just make you feel less pain later.

"No!" She shook her head emphatically, and I realized I said the last sentence aloud. "I don't know what they did to you, but you don't have to be okay with it. Not anymore."

One of the first things my S.O. drilled into my head was control. I was trained to manipulate others, and he'd always told me to do so I first needed complete power over myself. By pretending he was beside me giving me instructions, I rearranged myself into the perfect picture of composure. Nothing they'd done was really that bad, even though my memories were coming back in. I just felt betrayed that Hydra felt the need to change my brain. I agreed with them. With everything they'd told me.

Now that my shit was together and my head was clear, I remembered why I was here. I wasn't supposed to be befriending these people, I was here to use my specific skillset and get us some information. It was my job to get them to trust me, at least enough to let their guard down.

The door to my cell slid open, and Agent Fitz stepped in quickly.

"Uhhh… I um… Okay. Skye is in danger, and Coulson went to save her but she's not back yet. We're in Puerto Rico, and they're in an underground alien city." He wrung his hands together, and I was struck by how helpless he looked. When talking to him, not caring seemed really hard.

"What do you need Agent Fitz? You want me to go in after them?" I stood up, brushing dust off the far too large plain black pants they'd given me. He nodded, stumbling over his words.

"Mack is down there, and it's just, I owe him. He's being controlled by something alien, but I think I found a way to reverse it." I didn't know who Mack was. Anyway, the whole situation didn't add up; why ask me to go instead of someone in SHIELD? I asked Agent Fitz as much, and he pulled a syringe out of his back pocket. Hydra sure stuck me with a lot of those in the beginning. I didn't know why they used any. Why? "Hey, are you okay? Okay. I can't ask anyone on the team because you have to inject this directly into a vein. And he has to be knocked out first."

"I can do it."

Duty calls.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

I went hand over hand down the cord, wishing for my gloves. The second my bare feet touched the sandy ground, if lit up in a glowing blue pattern. In my experience, glowing blue was a really bad sign, so I quickly followed the scuffed footprints through the cavernous halls. The little steps I followed were soon joined by giant prints, and I heard yelling ahead. Agent Coulson pounded on a stone wall, but before I could call to him a dark mass slid between us, and attacked Agent Coulson. That'd be Mack.

The syringe was in a little wrist sheath, ready to be activated with a flick. Agent Coulson was having no luck, getting tossed around like a ragdoll. I leapt onto Mack's back, pulling his shoulders left and swinging my feet right to force him to spin and go down hard on his face. He stood with surprising ease, punching me and throwing me against a wall. Rebounding back, I snapped a few quick punches, which seemed to have no effect. He easily backhanded Coulson, smashing him to the ground, where he crumpled and lay unmoving. Mack tossed me against the wall again, but hesitated when he touched me.

That's when everything started shaking. The ancient mortar strained, and the ceiling rained dust and debris. Mack punched me again as I watched everything weaken, blood running into my eyes. I watched as the wall exploded outward, twisting at the last second so Mack caught a stone in the head, riding his slack body to the ground. Pressing the needle into his vein, I moved to cover him, but the world went back.

Sounds slowly began to register, so I peeled my eyes open. The first thing I saw was Agent Simmons standing on a crumpled wall, looking painfully alone. She looked as crumpled as the stone, broken down, watching as they carted Skye off on a stretcher.

No, she wasn't broken. She was shouting orders, the eye of the hurricane, the point around which the chaos whirled.

Agent Coulson followed the stretcher, talking to a thoroughly traumatized Skye. a single tear rolled down her face, but she didn't seem to notice. I'm not sure she was seeing anything, just gazing at a pile of darker rocks. As I blinked the blood and dust from my eyes, the rocks took shape. An arm, a foot. A face.

The ground shifted beneath me again and I wondered how much more the ceiling could take. But it wasn't the whole place moving, it was just me. I was still laying on top of that guy Mack, shielding him from that explosion. The explosion that made no sense. He groaned and sat up as if I wasn't on top of him, looking really confused after a few moments when he realized someone was on his lap.

"Hey, who let you out?" He demanded. I bounced up, wincing at the shrapnel in my back.

"Agent Fitz sent me to help you. He would've come himself, but I had to knock you out first and he didn't think he'd be able to do it."

"First?"

"Oh, yeah. He made an antitoxin you had to be injected with." I showed him the piece still attached to my wrist. "But you had to be unconscious for it to work."

"Well, thanks." His eyes scanned behind me, getting more and more horrified by the second. Moving away from me, he made a strangled noise that sounded like 'Trip'. That didn't make any sense though.

Coulson strode back in, now with Agent Morse behind him.

"Thank you for helping us," Agent Morse gave me a little half smile as he spoke to me. "Just for safety, we have to, uh," he held up a pair of handcuffs.

I slipped them on and flicked them on with a practiced hand. Back to my cage. But I guess it was necessary, since I had no control over myself.

Most of my time was spent waiting on Agent Simmons to come back and visit. Skye came once, but there was something different. Like her heart had been scarred in some way it could never come back from. She was hiding something, and she knew I knew it.

When the ground started shaking, I wondered what it had to do with her secret. The lights flickered and the doors locked and unlocked randomly. After maybe a minute the man who was in fatigues before threw open my door when it unlocked. Well, first he ran headlong into it and yelled some curses.

"Alright, Junior Fist of Hydra. Fitz said we could trust you to help us. An Asgardian and a Kree are trying to take Skye away." He seemed taken aback, like he couldn't believe that was an actual sentence he had to say. "Oh yeah." He pointed at himself. "Hunter."

Hunter went to find Agent Morse while I raced in the direction he pointed me, basically just looking for trouble. It took a few minutes of running around to find the Asgardian. I followed the aggressive yelling once I was close enough to hear. She was charging down some stairs, so I threw myself down after her, knocking her face-first over the last few steps.

Whipping around, her sword swung inches from my torso and I had to back handspring out of the way. I had no experience fighting someone with a sword, so I mostly focused on ducking and staying alive.

A sword worked a lot like a baton or a staff, so I found her rhythm. All offense. She jabbed and I lunged to the side so she ran instead into a steel chair. Which her sword cut through with ease. I had to stay between her and the gray wall behind me, since that seemed to be her target, so I could never roll to safety or draw her out. Grabbing two pieces of chair, I swung brutally with one so she would spread her arm, and used the other to catch the hilt of her sword and twisting it quickly to snap it out of her grip.

I forgot to anticipate how much fighting a pissed off Asgardian was going to suck, even unarmed. I tried to spin her to the floor, but she was superhumanly fast, allowing her to toss me off, back onto the stairs.

In a few seconds the barrier was gone, stabbed through, and the shaking stopped as Skye shot herself.

One less person in the world who might notice if I wasn't.

I didn't know I'd fallen to my knees until Fitz helped me stand, assuring me it was just a tranquilizer.

I went back to my room on the plane. Simmons came in periodically to check on me, but Skye didn't visit anymore. They said she was off base. I think they lost her again.

"Why are you still helping me?" I asked Simmons, just like I did every day. She spent hours of her life trying to make mine better, and it made no sense. Plus, I felt guiltier every time she smiled at me, remembering I'd probably killed some of her friends.

"Well you've helped us twice now haven't you? And your blood samples proved that the alien virus was contained in the temple, so we could flood the city." She smiled at me again, but all I felt was disappointment.

"That temple gave people superpowers. Why would you ever want to destroy that? You could have so much power…" I trailed off at the horrified look on her face. I knew the look. I'd worn it myself, when I was young and afraid. She was reliving something traumatic.

"It doesn't just," she stopped to calm her trembling voice. "It doesn't just give powers to whoever steps foot in it. If you don't have an alien gene it…"

"Kills you? The man of rock-" she started crying and moved quickly toward the door. I jumped up, feeling awful for making her cry. "I know Simmons. When a teammate dies it feels like a personal failure, like you should have seen it coming. You agonize over how you could have prevented it, blaming yourself for every breath you take while they have none, feeling guilty for not saving them somehow. But it wasn't your fault Simmons. It was this alien thing, and you couldn't have stopped it from happening. And all you can do now is make his death mean something, remember and honor him the way he would have wanted."

She nodded softly. I don't know why I tried to help her. I mean, it made her trust me more, but it wasn't like that. She'd just looked so sad, and I wanted to make her feel better. Careful, I reminded myself. Attachments are dangerous, especially here. Especially in any job this dangerous.

The next mission they asked me on, I was given back my shoes. Unfortunately, they still didn't bother to prep me past 'Make sure the Asian lady stays truthful, protect the old guy named Gonzalez,' but I overheard the others saying where we were going. A place for super people who might very well try to kill us. And no one trusted me enough to even give me enough, so I'd be fistfighting machine guns. Again.

We were escorted to a Chinese looking building where a woman greeted us. She was beautiful the way a snake was, elegant, but a monster beneath. Gonzalez clearly didn't see it, talking to her calmly and even giving her a present. It was a pendant, something Chinese mothers would traditionally give their babies as a symbol of love, protection, and luck. It was a nice gesture, and the woman, Jiaying, even dropped her guard for a moment. She was definitely planning on doing something terrible. I tapped a message on my leg in Morse code, knowing they were watching. They responded in a flashing light, behind Jiaying where she couldn't see it. Just one word: Wait.

Jiaying was lying, faking, growing more agitated until she blew up, or rather, a pretty blue gem did. I threw myself on it as fast as possible, but the mist had already reached him, and he was choking. A sharp jab hit my stomach as the shards buried into my flesh. The spot heated up, but it didn't hurt. More like sliding into a hot bath in the dead of winter, thawing even your roughest edges, smoothing away your pain into peace and comfort. The feeling spread from the slices outward, and I knew I was going to die. I could see my skin being ensconced in rock. But if this was death, why did it feel so _right_?

Every molecule in my body felt different, but not in a bad way. It felt like I'd finally gained control of myself. There'd always been some part of me that seemed out of reach, so I could never master myself, and plenty of others saw that emptiness. They put themselves there and controlled me. Technically I was still a puppet, but SHIELD held the strings now, not Hydra. Here at least I think I could cut them if I chose to.

I was bored, alone in my box, so I propped my mattress against the wall and used it as a punching bag. Without gloves, I wrapped my hands in torn off strips of my shirt, now crusty with blood and sweat. The sports bra and athletic shorts I'd been wearing since I got back from the last mission were flexible only when sweat soaked, usually stiff from salt. The solution to the discomfort: Always be sweating or asleep.

I swore every way I knew as my hand hit the end of a metal piece again, tearing into the skin of my knuckles.

"Widen your stance." A middle aged Asian woman who wasn't much bigger than me leaned on the door, watching me critically.

Who was she to correct me? "Excuse me?"

In one quick motion, she hooked both my feet and knocked me flat on my butt. "Shoulder width apart."

I gave her a quick, sharp nod, acknowledging she was right the way I'd been taught. She stared at my hands with particular interest, probably noting that they were already scabbed over. Pushing up to my feet, I went back to hitting, carefully widening my stance. I asked whether they had another job for me, but she was gone, leaving new clothes.

The new sports bra, pants, and shirt fit fine, still a little big, but it gave me the absurd image of Coulson bra shopping for me. Stifling my laughter, I followed the woman, who introduced herself as May, into a room with padded floors and a line of punching bags. It took me back to my childhood dojo, and I almost smiled.

"Why did you let me out?" I demanded.

"You look like you need to punch something." She strapped on boxing gloves and threw me a set. "I get it."

Tossing on the gloves, I faked forward, falling back at the last second and catching her right under the ribs with a snap kick. My foot barely grazed her as she dropped in a low spin, knocking my feet out from under me. I turned it into a backflip and smashed her chin with my heel, snapping her head back. Bouncing in before she brought her face down, I got in a few good punches. She caught my arm, locking it behind me but not snapping it.

"You're angry with SHIELD. Why? Are you still loyal to Hydra?" May pressed. I flipped out of the position, but she kept a hand on my arm, so I spun in with an elbow to the gut. I tried to shift her onto my back, but she changed the momentum into jumping on my shoulders and twisting us both down. We rolled backward in opposite directions, her landing crouched like a cat and me on my feet. "You're being blinded to the truth."

She launched herself at me, but I simply sidestepped and clotheslined her, dropping and putting her into a headlock. "Actually, I think I'm the only one around here who's seeing clearly. SHIELD, Hydra, it's all the same. You take people at their lowest, training them like dogs. They're not people to you, just numbers, weapons, no more human than the gun in your hand." I smashed her face into the floor and she responded by headbutting backward hard enough she could slip my grip. Blood poured from my nose as she pinned me, snapping my head around from her punches.

I hated the way she was babying me, not going for the finishing blow. "We're trying to help you."

"Like Hell!" That fueled me with enough rage to buck her off and twist up so I was pinning her, despite my legs being trapped beneath her body. "Don't hold back," I growled, putting all my might into a two-handed punch to her temple.

At the last second her head jerked to the side, making me punch the floor. I didn't know there was a break in the mats, but she'd led us there, so my fists collided with concrete. Bones audibly shattered, despite my gloves.

May stood over me as I fought the pain. "Don't let anger make you sloppy."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

I got transferred to the nearest secure SHIELD office, the boat Gonzalez used to run. Funnily enough, it was only secure for a few days. Then the super-people showed up and put me in a room with all the SHIELD personnel.

"Why were you being kept prisoner? Join us and fight your captors!" The man's eyes blazed with cult worship.

Jiaying strode into the room, barking orders like the dictator she was. "Don't bother with her, she works for Coulson." Her pause told me she'd connected the dots.

"You touched the crystals, and here you are." She moved in close, alight with fanaticism. "You're one of us. Join us, and help everyone receive their birthright, just as you've received yours."

The change was so abrupt, even her followers were momentarily confused.

"How about no. I know it kills most people who touch it. Only the unlucky survive."

"Only the _worthy_ survive." That didn't make any sense. What did it divine as worthy, and how did a rock made that kind of decision? "If you're meant to be one of us, it bestows on you a gift."

"A gift?"

"A power. Yours must be subtle to go undiscovered this long. Or have you learned to control it?" I shook my head mutely as she told me to think back, look for anything unusual about myself or happening around me.

"Healing," I realized. "I've been healing supernaturally fast."

She smiled warmly at me. "Your gift is not destructive. It's peaceful, like mine. You are meant to help our people. Please, help us now. I'm trying to create a world where our people can live freely, without fear or persecution. I'm building you a better world."

I felt gutted. Jiaying wanted me, she told me I belonged. She cared about me already.

I gave one of the copy-women a nod, striding down the hallway with a guy carrying a box of crystals. My cover was blown the second anyone saw me, but luckily my job was just to babysit the crystals. The first one to enter the room was Mack, carrying an impractical seeming fire ax.

"You're-"

"The prisoner. Not anymore." I stood, making a show of stretching and cracking my knuckles.

"I was gonna say the girl who saved me. But sure," He raised the ax, "We can go with the dramatic version."

Mack swung, but I faked in, grabbing his outstretched bicep and launching myself onto his back, leaping into the air and rebounding on the wall, right off the security camera. I rolled to a stop on the hard floor, just past where Mack stood. The camera fell behind him, mangled and lifeless. He stopped and glanced between it and me.

"They're about to send someone down here to check on me. You should be gone then. Take the crystals, I'll do my best to slow them down."

"Why are you helping me?"

"Whatever hit me, it belongs to the world. But the world isn't ready for it. Go!" I shoved the crate into his massive arms, and he hefted it onto his shoulder. "Find Skye. I think Jiaying is going to hurt her. I'll try to fake them out down here, get as many out of your way as possible. Go now, before they show up."

Surprisingly, Mack obeyed me, lugging away the heavy box as fast as he could. He turned the corner out of sight just as Gordon, a teleporter, popped in.

"What's going on? Where are the crystals?"

I pretended to glance nervously back at a cabinet, just enough that he would notice but it wouldn't seem purposeful. He took my bait, reappearing over there in front of it, just as my homemade bomb went off. SHIELD really shouldn't leave so much unguarded. Gordon attempted to teleport out the door, but Agent Fitz was there, and he clotheslined him with a metal pole. I hobbled over, one side damaged by shrapnel, and fell brutally on Gordon. Fitz looked away at the last second as I twisted his head sideways, snapping his neck and standing back up.

"When did you steal a bomb?" He asked, looking at the shredded wall and floor where the cabinet had been.

I couldn't help but smile a little, though I doubt he could tell through the dirt. "I made it. All that time I've spent with you and Simmons, your science rubbed off."

Fitz laughed, his smile disappearing as someone spoke over the coms. "Skye's mom tried to kill her. Mack says her father stopped her, but Skye ordered Mack to dump the crystals in the ocean first. What's that gonna do?"

"I have no idea. But that means it's time to go. Do we…" I motioned Gordon's limp body.

"What do you want to do?"

"I can do whatever I want?" He winced, clearly not understanding my meaning. Maybe putting them on spikes wasn't something SHIELD actually did. "I could take it?"

"No! What do you want with a body?" He demanded, clearly ready to be horrified by the answer.

"I want to send him back to his family," I decided, lifting the body onto my shoulders. "Someone cared about him, and they'll be needing this for the funeral."

Fitz studied me, making me a little uncomfortable. I felt like maybe he saw a little too much of me, even what I tried to hide. "Why?"

I knew he wasn't talking about why they'd need a body for a funeral. He was asking why I was showing mercy, which made me uncomfortable again. "I don't know. Just keep it to yourself."

We walked up to the deck and found Skye and her father, looking far worse off than we were. Her father cried all the way back to the base.

It felt good to finally make my own decision, to control myself. Although Coulson was probably going to be pissed.

"You're sure you have to go?" Skye stood in front of the door, waiting with her security pass like I'd asked in the note I'd slipped in her bunk.

"Yes. I've been someone's weapon since I was nine years old. It's time to find out who I am, when no one else gets to tell me the answer." I was leaving, maybe for good. It was odd, knowing that from now on I wasn't Hydra's. Simmons had found a way to clear my mind of the brainwashing, making it so only my original trigger words, in their original languages, could ever give someone power over me again. And luckily I was the only one alive who knew what they were.

Skye stepped closer, lowering her voice. "Don't worry about Coulson. Good luck." She pushed the bag she was holding into my hands. "It's just some clothes, a little money to get you started. Call me if you get into trouble."

"Thank you, Skye."

"It's Daisy actually. Daisy Johnson." She gave a tentative smile. It was her birth name, from the parents she'd just lost for the second time. A way to honor them. Maybe I could do the same for her.

I reached out, shaking her hand. "Nice to meet you Daisy Johnson. I'm Jamie Frederick."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

I got almost two months of peace before Hydra tracked me down. I may have been living in sewers and abandoned houses and subway tunnels, but it was the freest my life had ever been. My food came mostly from dumpsters, but if you show up at the right place at the right time it's as fresh as if you bought it. Daisy and I spoke on the phone every few days, giving updates back and forth. Simmons was gone and Fitz was losing it. Hydra had gone eerily silent, and Hunter had started a witchhunt for any remaining members. I told Daisy about the occasional burning I got in my chest, and she put me on with a doctor, who put me on with Fitz, who said I probably had a loose wire sparking. It was like having a set of overprotective parents constantly watching over me, but far enough they could only give suggestions and not commands. Like any parents, they were exasperating, but kinda nice. And of course I was probably acting like their parent just as much, making sure Fitz was eating, trying to talk Daisy through her feelings for Lincoln, who she kept urging me to go see.

Best months of my life. Then someone knocked on my door.

That week I was living in an old apartment complex which had been abandoned halfway through construction. No one but the other squatters dared enter the building, and they'd learned two days ago what happens to people who tried to mess with me.

"Jamie?" A voice called through the door. I grinned, kicking my feet off the couch and swinging the door open wide. In came my favorite person in the world, my old S.O.. Grant Ward.

"I'm reassembling Hydra, the right way." He sat beside me on the decrepit cushions, completely at ease. "The new way in- you fight. And if you win, you advance."

"A stronger generation. No more dead weight, no more fat old men? Sounds good to me." I drank the beer he bought us, savoring it. Two sides of my mind were at war, but I was determined not to let him know that. Half of me wanted nothing more than for things to be the way they used to be, me and Grant taking on the world, me supporting him as he took it by storm. Maybe this time I could lead alongside him, and shape the agency the way I wanted it. The problem was, I wanted it the way I'd seen Coulson's SHIELD. Half of me was undyingly loyal to him, but half of me was now loyal to them too.

"I know you had a problem with a few of the money guys. That won't happen anymore." Grant said it as if we were sharing an inside joke, but nothing about it had seemed funny to me, since I was the one they'd tried to hurt.

"Why? You taught me to be just like you Grant. We're not loyal to agencies, we're loyal to people. So why rebuild Hydra?" It didn't make sense. He'd never agreed with most of their ideals, and tried to train me to doubt them too. Of course, it didn't really work, although he was the one who taught me that sending pictures of a person's dead body to their family was rude. "Because people know the name. The symbol. And they fear the Hydra."

"Not people." He leaned in close, suddenly intense. "Phil Coulson's team, with SHIELD. May knows it means I'm coming for her and everyone she loves. Just as she did to me."

I nodded slowly, making up my mind. "Grant, you know I would have followed you to the ends of the Earth and beyond, but a lot has changed. I can't join you. I'm sorry."

"The list of people loyal to Hydra is one sheet of paper. I thought I could count on you, Jamie. Are you forgetting who you were before I trained you?"

"No, of course not. But I'm not that little girl anymore. I can take care of myself, and whoever else needs me. You all made damn sure of that. And, um, something happened." How to explain terragenesis to Grant? "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"My back. I went through a door." I placed a hand on his shoulder, bracing myself and absorbing the pain. "You have powers. How?"

"Went through the Mist. and that's not all I can do. I somehow store all the pain that's ever been inflicted on me, including what I heal from others, and can inflict those pains on others from a distance."

"How far?"

"I don't know." I hadn't exactly wanted to practice. "I can't heal unless I'm touching the person, but I'm getting stronger."

"Jamie, with that much power I can't risk SHIELD controlling you. You're sure you won't join willingly?" My heart ached at the offer, wanting nothing more than to have him back by my side, team again, someone who cared about me. But he wanted to hurt other people who I cared about, even though not as much. He was my whole family. But who he wanted to kill, they had families too, and they protected innocent people from losing their families. I think I'd made up my mind on this awhile ago. I told him I couldn't go back. "I'm sorry Jamie, I've really missed you. You should've joined."

Springing to my feet, I eyed him warily.

"Sputnik."

Nothing happened, but I recognized the trigger word. It was Bucky's. He was trying to control me.

"Wrong weapon asshole." I raised my hands to pour pain over him ,but I couldn't do it. The Grant who saved me time and time again, the only one who treated me like a person all through training, that man was stil in there somewhere.

Then he shot me.

Luckily enough, I hadn't told Grant I healed quickly, which apparently also applied to tranquilizer darts. I woke barely a minutes drive from the apartment building. My chest stung a little where the bullet hit, but only for a second before it finished healing. My hands and feet were tied, a black bag over my head.

"Prep a cell. We'll need a video link into the area, and no one can be given access. She's powered, so have a hundred yard perimeter, no one but me crosses." He paused, but whoever was on the other end of the call was too quiet for me to hear. "Yeah, I can talk her into joining. And if not, well, get me Whitehall's documents. Two and a half hours."

Think. Take inventory.

Nothing but my clothes. He'd taken all my weapons, my backpack I wore everywhere, even the phone in my bra. But I was unharmed and my head was clear, meaning he hadn't drugged me. I still had my shoes and the knives pressed into their soles, so we were in a hurry.

Get your bearings.

Back, probably not visible. Roomy car, with a row of seats between Grant and I. My spine was pressed to the back door. I was tied to the back hatch, so throwing myself out a window wasn't an option. There went plan A.

We turned onto a busier road, and the noise was enough to cover me shifting to reach my feet. My shoes were slit in the back for times like this, so I could slide the knives out without taking them off. I palmed one blade, cutting hurriedly through the binds on my wrists and the hood, then working them off my feet. A bungee cord attached me to the car, and I could see the tiny wires rigging it to knock me out again if I detached it. The wiring was a crude job, simply set to pull the trigger of a tranq pistol in the cup holder if I pulled too hard.

Make a plan.

The bungee could spring pretty hard, but I could move fast. Do a flip turn. The idea made me grin, remembering my days in the pool. And maybe the concept could be applied now.

Don't hesitate.

I flipped forward, grabbing the pistol mid roll, landing with my feet pressed flat to the backseat. My hands hit the top, and I pulled into starting backstroke position. Just like in a pool, I pushed off hard, arching back through the window. I landed from the backflip on my feet, and threw myself as quickly as possible off the road. Safely in a tight alleyway, I thought about how many times I'd been knocked out, inflicting all that on Grant. The car swerved and crunched to a stop against a telephone pole.

I ran as hard as I could, running until sweat blurred my vision and my whole being was consumed by the effort of putting one foot in front of the other, and keeping air in my lungs. The pain in my body kept away the pain in my mind.

When I finally stopped, it took me a moment to figure out why. A payphone stood beside me. I reached for my wallet, but the gun was still in my hand, now slick with sweat and blood. The two mingled together all over my body from a hundred little glass scrapes. Once I'd safely tucked it away, I dialed Daisy.

"Daisy," I sighed the second she answered.

I could hear her sit up. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

A little sob laugh escaped me. "I just-" The burning sensation hit my heart, making me hiss in pain.

"What happened? What's your location?"

"I'm fine." My voice cracked, and I fought to keep it under control. "Actually no. I can't do this right now. I'll call you again soon."

"We can come get you, I'll trace this call and-"

"No," I interrupted. "You won't."

I hung up. Even after all this, I couldn't let them get Grant.

Sitting in a burned out basement only made me feel empty, and just plain horrible about myself. I needed a goal, except I didn't have one.

The heart pain hit me again, bringing with it the weird tingling all over my skin. This time I didn't fight it. I did what seemed natural, which was basically willing the tingling in toward my heart. It was only about a millisecond before the rock spread over me again, cutting off my furious cursing.

This time I was only slightly annoyed as I shook off the cocoon. Well now at least I had a goal.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

I got off the bus a few miles from Lincoln's hospital and walked the rest of the way. The receptionist looked confused at the dirt all over me. I'd almost forgotten I was homeless and probably looked like a runaway.

"Hi, is Doctor Campbell in tonight?" She still looked suspicious. I remembered the time I'd flipped over the handlebars of my bike as a kid, forcing the scrapes and bruises on myself now. "I'm sorry, I just got into a bike accident, it wasn't that bad but Lincoln is the only doctor I trust. If he's busy I can come back tomorrow, but I think it'll be too late to reset my arm by then."

I held up my now bent backward arm, and she motioned a nurse. "Do you need a wheelchair, sweetie? Here, you just sit right here, I'll take care of everything. Is there someone I can call for you?"

My fake tears were working, and I added a pitiful little sniffle. "My mom's at work, I don't want to bother her."

"What about your dad?"

I let the tears pour liberally down my cheeks. "He left last year. Maybe I can call my grandma, but it's gonna take so long for her to get here and my arm hurts so bad," I sobbed.

"Don't worry, I'll get Doctor Campbell and he'll fix you right up, and when your grandmother gets here she can do the paperwork. I got you, I got you." He wheeled me into a room, reassuring me everything would be okay and they'd call my grandmother whenever I was ready, or we could wait for my mom's shift to end.

Lincoln came in smiling, looking quite excellent in his lab coat, which was rare given how much I hate doctors. "Hi, I'm Doctor Campbell, you can call me Lincoln. It says here you're a return patient, but I couldn't find your records."

"That'd be because I gave a fake name. And I already set my arm, so don't worry about that."

"Are you with SHIELD? Tell Daisy to leave me alone." He stepped back, ready for a fight.

"No, actually, but I am Inhuman." He started talking, so I cut him off. "Please, I don't know what's going on and you're the only doctor who understands Inhumans. Other than Simmons, but if I go to SHIELD they might not let me leave. They weren't exactly happy I ran away."

"Coulson's keeping tabs on me too. Says I'm volatile." Volatile. Wait until he heard.

"You've got nothing on me."

By the time I finished explaining everything that happened, he looked pretty sorry for me. "Best guess, you gain a new power every time you go through the mist, but this is untested, we've never put someone through twice. And I think you're sensing when someone is changing, and, if you choose, take their power onto yourself." He looked at the clock with a sigh. "I have to finish my round, but I'll be back. If you wait I'll help you, but I've already told you everything I know. There's a back staircase, take a right and then seventh door on your left. No cameras."

Lincoln left, but I didn't. Maybe I could convince him to let me use his shower, or give me a clean shirt. Daisy had given me two outfits, but both were ruined by now. My gear I wore underneath was absolutely disgusting at this point. Today I had a flannel shirt and jean jacket vest over it. I figured he'd be awhile, so I laid down and went to sleep.

Do I ever get a break?

Apparently not, since I woke up to the sounds of a war going on downstairs. The whole building shook. Daisy.

Also, why can't I stay out of shit that doesn't involve me? A good question to ask myself as I sprinted down the stairs toward the commotion. Daisy and Lincoln were double teaming a giant blue humanoid who seemed to have porcupine quills instead of hair. He was massive, at least 7 or 8 feet tall and ripped. Despite Daisy's shock wave and Lincoln's electricity blast hitting him directly in the chest, he was still advancing. I threw out my arms, hitting him with every pain I'd known, and he fell hard. The floor beneath him shook apart, and he crashed through the floors below us as well.

"Freddie?"

"Daisy?"

Lincoln looked between the two of us, putting the pieces together.

"Come with us, your life is in danger." Daisy motioned to Lincoln desperately.

He looked so sad I almost wanted to hug him. "My life is in ruins." With that, he turned and ran away.

"Freddie?" The hitch in her voice made me want to stay, but I shook my head and ran after Lincoln.

He didn't notice me until he was unlocking his car.

"Why are you following me? Go home." He got in the car, but I slipped into the passenger seat before he could lock the doors. "Get out. I'm not taking you with me."

"No, I can help you." He pressed his hands to his temples, like he was having a really bad case of deja vu. "Wait, I think…"

Instinctually, I put a hand on the side of the car, concentrating on manifesting my new power the way my body told me to. Somehow I knew we were invisible, and I grinned at Lincoln. "Now can we go?"

We stopped at a motel, turning invisible whenever cameras were present. Turns out it's pretty easy to break in when no one can see you. Pretty soon we were both showered and dressed in new clothes from the little shop down the street. He went for food, and I curled up on one of the beds, hoping he'd still be there when I woke.

A hand touched my shoulder and I snapped awake, putting the person in an arm bar.

"Sorry Lincoln." I released him, healing the pain I'd caused.

"You're a weird kid, you know that?" He rolled his shoulder and tossed me a backpack. "We should get moving. SHIELD and some black ops group are after us. I think my old friend John will help us out."

"Bad idea. We shouldn't get anyone else wrapped up in this. What if that group tracked us and killed him for hiding us? You'd never forgive yourself." I didn't tell him, but I also had a bad feeling about his past, like I should steer clear of anything he procured from it. Which is probably hypocritical coming from me, but still.

He gave me a grudging nod and asked what I had in mind instead. Truthfully I didn't know. I opened my mouth to suggest something random, but something stopped me. It was almost silent, but there was a faint rustling in the hall. Quiet footsteps, heavy fabric moving, and the unmistakable click of a safety being turned off.

Lincoln was watching me, his expression turned to a mix of confusion and fear as I leapt forward and pushed him out the window. The fire escape caught him easily, and I turned invisible not a second before they kicked down the door. They cleared the place in no time, finding our old clothes in the trash can, but not much else.

"Place is clear ma'am. They were here, but they're gone," The lead man said into his earpiece. "Yes ma'am, the other escaped Inhuman joined Campbell. Should we release her picture?"

I crept closer to hear her response, since now they were talking about me. If they released my picture… no. I couldn't let myself think about down on my panic, I leaned in.

"...Don't have a name for her in any known database. Reach out…" The last part of the sentence was lost to me as the man abruptly turned toward the window. I heard it too- Lincoln's car starting. Taking my cue, I ducked through the men and scrambled down the fire escape, slamming into my seat and grabbing hold of the handle. Soon enough we were speeding unseen down the highway.

"I think they're releasing our pictures to the public." We sat in a dimly lit parking garage munching donuts. Lincoln seemed to find them suspect, coming from a dumpster and all, but I was starving and exhausted and we'd run out of cash.

He examined his cinnamon twist critically. "That'll make it impossible to have a normal life again."

"I never really had one, and, to be honest, I don't think I ever want one. Don't know what I'd do with it, really." Maybe one day I could be normal, but I'd need a lot of help from the intelligence community to do it. Legally Hayden Brown existed, so I could be her, but the name was known by Hydra and SHIELD.

"Aw, come on." He bit into the donut, finally deeming it worthy. "There must be something you miss."

"Lincoln, when Hydra picked me up the list of things that made me happy included stuffed animals and erasers shaped like elephants. This is all I've ever known." I turned away, tracing patterns in my breath on the window. "So you just wanna be left alone to be a regular doctor? Why, when you've got such an interesting future with SHIELD? And, you know, with Daisy."

"I don't want interesting. I want a nice steady job, a simple life where I'm not being shot at or eating out of dumpsters."

"Oh my god eating out of a dumpster is not a big deal, drama queen. It's just one donut. But yeah, I guess I see the appeal of not getting shot at. I'd still rather it be me they're shooting at than someone I care about."

"Weren't you Hydra?" It took me a second to realize he had no way of knowing that unless Daisy told him. The betrayal smarted, and I wondered whether I'd never be allowed to trust someone. He seemed to notice the change, and moved to explain. "When you were sleeping your hair fell off to the side and I saw the mark? Was that voluntary?"

I brought my hand defensively to the base of my skull where the hair ended, gently touching the tattoo burned there. The Hydra symbol was a small but permanent reminder that I was theirs. "In a sense."

The stolen phone vibrated, sending us one of those universal alerts. Lincoln's ID picture and name and a shot of me in the hospital, the headline declaring us international criminals. My world narrowed down to me and the phone, breathing shallow and hands shaking. I could sort of hear Lincoln talking, but my head seemed to be covered in some sort of bubble wrap. He took the phone, anger snapping off of him in electrical bursts, shorting out all the lights. It was also enough to double my heart rate, and I could hear the blood rushing by my ears.

"Sorry, I just," He slammed the heels of his hands into the steering wheel. "I have no chance now. Running or fighting, neither one is a life." He studied me in the gloom. "Why are you panicking? You don't care."

"Because now they're gonna know I'm alive." I couldn't help the tears.

"Who?" I was glad for the darkness so I didn't have to look him in the eye.

"I wasn't Hydra's usual recruit. I was nine, I had a family. A dad and an older brother. He's probably all grown up by now. We were poor, and our father had to work a lot to keep the apartment. I just…" I knew I probably shouldn't be ashamed, but I was. I'd hurt them so much, and none of it was their fault. "I was bullied really badly. The only time I was happy was during my martial arts class, but they got too expensive. Eventually… I tried to kill myself. I leapt off the roof of a highrise, but he caught me."

"Your brother?" He sounded gentle and surprisingly non-judgemental. Usually when you tell people you were suicidal, they start treating you with the kid gloves, or worse, they act disgusted, like how dare you be depressed? Lincoln was neither, and I got the feeling he'd had his own dealings with depression.

"No." I brought my eyes up, defiant. He was going to freak, but that didn't mean I shouldn't tell him. "Grant Ward. he took me in, brought me to Hydra, and enrolled me in their anti-Widow program. The Shadow program."

"What'd they tell your family?"

"They told them I'd succeeded in my jump. The police pretended they found my body on the sidewalk. Hydra's influence is everywhere. Or, it was."

We were silent for more than a minute before I plucked up the courage to ask about his family. "Not much to tell there. They kinda cut me off when I became an alcoholic. All I've got is John. he was my AA sponsor."

Silence filled the car again, but it wasn't unpleasant. After a bit, Lincoln suggested I try to get some sleep, and my body obliged before I could even agree.

My head slammed the window, jolting me awake. We smashed out of the garage into a narrow city street, two black SUVs in pursuit.

"I'm sorry, I thought it would be safe to leave the garage as long as I shorted out all the cameras. I think that's what drew them." He was obviously embarrassed, so I didn't press for why he'd left in the first place.

"Step on it and hang a right into the third alleyway." He did as I said, and the second we were out of sight I turned the car invisible. We swung quietly onto the street on the other side. Lincoln pulled over, asking to switch drivers so he could take a turn sleeping.

I let him fall asleep across the backseat before I pulled into a now almost empty street. Driving made me incredibly nervous, and I clutched the wheel so tightly all the blood left my hands. Grant had tried to teach me a few years back, but at that point they'd locked him temporarily out of my training and I'd been taught during a field mission instead, so the rules of the road were pretty lost on me. The orange signs with the squigglies I think meant turns coming, and the green ones said what the road was. Otherwise I was just guessing.

I found us an almost deserted parking lot with a small grocery, and stepped carefully out of the car. Concentrating as hard as I could, I took my hands off the car. It stayed invisible, and I was able to grab a few essentials from inside. I was drenched in sweat when I got back in, but Lincoln was safely still asleep. Even now that I was touching it again, keeping us invisible was making black spots dance through my vision. I couldn't keep this up much longer, but the second I stopped we were dead. Food and water helped a little, but I was burning calories way faster than I could replace them, even with protein bars covered in pixie stick powder. I wanted to wake Lincoln and tell him to call for help, but something stopped me. He was running away from SHIELD too. If I warned him, he might just take off. I couldn't let him endanger himself that way, not now that I cared about him, and not with how much Daisy cared about him.

Daisy picked up the millisecond the call went through. "Hello?"

"It's Freddie. Lincoln and I are in trouble. Still wanna take us in?"

Daisy did as I told her, evidenced by the ATCU cars zipping away South. We'd created a distraction, shorting out the cameras in a hotel almost 15 blocks down. Once they were there, SHIELD slid quietly out of the restaurant bordering the alleyway.

"Freddie?" Daisy looked around wildly until I dropped our cloak. I opened the door, but my knees buckled when I tried to stand. She caught me, surprisingly strong under the leather jacket.

"Lincoln needs to be locked up. He's gonna be pissed." My voice was annoyingly weak, but still he stirred. I knocked him out with a flick of the wrist, but that was all I could manage. I blacked out too.

When I woke, Fitz was absently stroking my hair.

"Sorry." He pulled his hand back to the tablet. "I know you don't like to be touched. Coulson asked Bobbi and I to check up on you."

"I'm fine." Sitting up told me how untrue that was. The world spun and tilted like a rollercoaster in the middle of the ocean. "Woah."

"Drink this." Agent Morse raised the bed behind me, handing me juice. Fitz plopped in a green bendy straw. Slow sips, Grant's voice reminded me.

"Can I talk to Lincoln? He's probably pissed."

"Oh, he's pissed." She fiddled with the IV bag. "But he said he forgives you. He said you were calling to get us to take down your pictures, but he wouldn't tell us why that's so important. Daisy had already scrubbed the public records of your hydra identity, so no name comes up with your picture, and so far no one has identified you."

So even though Lincoln was mad, he'd kept my secret. Maybe trusting someone wasn't so bad. "Eventually they will. I need that picture taken down. And it's ruining Lincoln's chance for a regular life. He's a good guy, he deserves to be happy."

"Daisy tried, but it's too widespread. I'm sorry. I know you were trying to make a life for yourself, away from all this. We can, if you want, create a new identity for you. You'll have to change your appearance a little, but-"

"No. I'm tired of running away. You can leave this business, but this business never leaves you. I was raised by Hydra, intelligence is all I know.' Bobbi shrugged, starting to tell me why I was wrong, but I stopped her. "Even if I were to try acting normal, maybe going to an actual college, I'll never be normal. What do normal girls do? Go to the mall, hang out in bars? I walk into a mall, I'm cataloging exits, determining who around me is a threat. Bars? I never get drunk enough for it to be fun, because that slows reflexes and I'm always prepped for an attack. I can't live with pretending to be something I'm not. I'm accepting fate."

Woah, woah, way too much personal information shared there. I turned my face back to its usual bored mask. Fitz saw right through, which was equal parts comforting and terrifying, and got Bobbi to leave. He sat beside my bed, smiling like we were old friends.

"Everyone here is so stoic, not wanting to admit they need help, so no one ever thanked you." The words did not compute. Thank… me? And Fitz of all people, someone so wholeheartedly good, what did he have to thank me for? I'd never done anything good enough to warrant that. "You look confused. You've helped us over and over again. Saving Mack, protecting Gonzales."

"Fat lot of good that did any of us." I Instantly regretted snapping. It wasn't Fitz's fault.

"I know." He sounded so, so tired, and genuinely sorry. "Coulson shouldn't have sent you if he wasn't going to listen to you. He used you as a human lie detector, but didn't trust the results because they weren't what he was hoping for."

I was speechless. He'd put into words so effortlessly why I was angry. Sensing my gratitude, he blushed and stood.

"So, thank you. If there's anything you need…" With a soft pat to my arm, he left, leaving my head significantly clearer than he'd found it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Fitz and Daisy had both urged me to join in with the team, but I didn't for the first few days, not wanting to intrude. It still felt like I was, since I was on my way to have dinner with them, but what I'd told Fitz was true. I was done running from responsibility, done trying to rewrite fate. This was my world, for better or for worse. Hopefully better, which is why I chose SHIELD instead of Hydra. And now I needed to get to know the people I'd decided to work with.

I rolled my shoulders, loving my new suit from Fitz. he'd taken the one from Whitehall away, learning from it and mixing their tech with his. Analysis of the suit also taught him a few cool things I could do, like a pop up SHIELD from my arm and laser finger, both of which Coulson was apparently very excited about. At first I wanted nothing to do with any of it, but I'd agreed with myself that I wouldn't run away anymore, and that included from the past.

With a deep breath, I entered the room. Luckily, for a moment no one noticed me. Hunter was drinking beside Bobbi, who was discussing physical therapy with Mack. Fitz and Daisy were trying to balance spoons on their noses on the other side of the table, and getting laughed at by Lincoln sitting across from Coulson, who was at the head of the table entirely concentrated on his tablet. Trying to take it all in, Simmons perched on her chair beside Bobbi, a bit back from the table. Daisy told me what she'd been through, and it made sense she was overwhelmed. I grabbed the last seat, beside Daisy, uncomfortably close to Coulson. Daisy's spoon clattered off her nose and the table, but I caught it. Of course, everyone got quiet when they noticed me. May as well make the most of their attention. I plopped the spoon on my nose, easily balancing it. Fitz and Daisy clapped jokingly, but their smiles were genuine. Coulson on the other hand didn't look so enthused, but he slid a bag of fast food toward me anyway.

"I recommend the burgers. They're from DJs."

"Thank you." He only nodded. To me he seemed cold and distant, but the others were treating him like he was their cool dad, and he did seem much more relaxed tonight.

It was still enough change to give me vertigo, sitting in a room full of SHIELD agents, as one of them, when only a few months ago I wouldn't been planning how to kill them all. Maybe I still was, on some level. I mean, I did make a mental note of exits, cameras, and weapons the second I stepped through the door. Maybe it's a good thing Simmons and May and Hunter were all keeping a close eye on me. Simmons looked so much older than when she used to come in and give me check ups. She seemed wiser, but that wisdom had cost her, possibly even more than it had cost the rest of us. Most of the people in this room were trained to endure whatever got thrown our way. She was one of the only ones not prepared for fear and pain and slow agonizing death. We were trained to expect it, even look forward to death. Simmons was basically just a kid.

"Alright, we have to be serious now." Coulson sounded joking, but I didn't know him well enough to tell. "Agent Fitz, Agent Johnson, if you would stop throwing french fries we can get started. Okay. I wish we could, just once, have a meal together in peace, but we've got a world to protect. We need to talk about the effect Lash is going to have on Secret Warriors."

I looked involuntarily at the smartwatch on my wrist. I'd had it since the day I learned Daisy's name, when she'd asked me to join before I left. It hadn't been activated yet, and now that I was living on base it was pretty pointless.

"None." Daisy spoke up, suddenly serious. "We can fight him, we proved that in the hospital."

"Which ended with two of your team of four running off, while the third wasn't even present."

"That wasn't Daisy's fault." Lincoln's temper ignited, electrically charging the air around him and making my arm hair stand on end. He so obviously liked her. By what I could read from her body language, they were a couple and had hooked up at least once. Coulson's physical response to Lincoln told me right away he knew too and didn't approve, and that Lincoln wasn't helping her case.

"It was my fault. I should've trusted you Daisy, and brought Lincoln in sooner. I'm sorry for my cowardice." I bowed my head to Coulson, who just looked confused.

"So why come back?" My eyes shot to Lincoln as Coulson spoke, willing him to be silent. "Obviously you wanted no part of SHIELD before, so what changed?"

Deep breaths. "I tried life outside the intelligence community, and it didn't work. It's just not me. I want back in, doing good this time. I want in SHIELD."

They talked about twelve other problems they were facing, and I tried to listen up and have useful input. However, I had no idea what the heck was going on.

"It's a bit stressful when you first join, yeah?" Fitz grinned at me as we dispersed. "You picked a good team, but a bad time. Not that we've really had any good times…"

"I'm not sure I _did_ just join. Coulson obviously doesn't trust me. Not that I blame him."

"You're right." Coulson fell into step with me, motioning Fitz away. "I don't trust you. But I'd really like to. That's why a few days ago I had Kanig send us a present."

Fitz gave me a thumbs up, but none of the others noticed as Coulson led me away. What do you say to the guy running the agency you'd worked to take down for over five years, which you were trying to join? I had no idea, so I kept silent. We ended up in a dark, echoing space that looked like it had once been a hangar. In the very center sat a plain stool and a chair covered in wires, made of what appeared to be pressure plates. I stopped dead. There'd always been rumors, traitor SHIELD scientists leaking their research, but until now it had seemed like a ghost story, a myth to instill fear of SHIELD. But here it was, right before my eyes. SHIELD'S lie detection machine.

I forced myself to keep walking, sit down, to stay still as Coulson strapped me down.

"As long as you're honest you have no reason to be afraid." Was I honest? Not always. But I was being truthful at dinner. I didn't want in because of Hydra, or fear, or bribery. I wanted in because it was a good fit for me, or at least I wanted it to be.

"I'm ready," I told Coulson. He settled on his stool, tablet in hand, and I relaxed. At least after this I'd know where I belonged, whether that was SHIELD or not. The thought was oddly comforting. "We start with trial questions right?"

"Usually. Problem is, we don't know anything about you, so I had agents test it earlier. For this, we'll just go first things first." He tapped his screen, and I knew he was recording the conversation from here on out. "Obviously Hayden Emily Brown isn't your name. What is?"

"Freddie."

"What's Freddie a nickname for?"

"Jamie Frederick."

"Is that your legal name?"

"No. I was given that name by Hydra. They thought it would be easier to reinvent who I was, even in my own mind, if I had a new name."

"What's your birth name?" Shit. Please no more. No more questions. But not answering would mean forfeiting my only chance to become part of SHIELD.

"Claire. Claire Grace Ortholo." Just saying the name sent waves of hate crashing through my brain. Maybe it's lingering Hydra training, but all it reminded me of was my own weakness.

He could see what I was feeling on his tablet, and thankfully changed the subject. "Were you forced to join Hydra?"

"No. i joined of my own free will." Anticipating his next question, I explained as concisely as possible the same thing I'd told Lincoln.

"So your family thinks you're dead." Coulson was so quiet, I wondered what he was thinking about. Maybe his own family.

"Only had a father and a brother, but yeah, if they're still alive, they think I'm not."

"How old were you?"

I took a deep steadying breath. Here was where he discovered he couldn't legally hire me. "Nine years old."

"And how long ago was that?"

"Five years and a couple months." My eyes were closed, but I could hear his sharp intake of breath and long sigh as he did the math.

"You're fourteen?" he asked incredulously, voice laden with sadness. "You're too young, there's no way I can let you-"

"I'll be fifteen soon. FitzSimmons were sixteen when they started!"

"At the academy, where it's safe. I can send you there next year but-"

"I can handle it! I've been through just as much shit as any of you, maybe more, and it's aged me." I forced myself to calm down and speak rationally. "Years of Hydra brainwashing and training have made me mentally as old as all of you, and as strong and intelligent as any adult. Sure, my education wasn't traditional, but for this job that isn't what I need. Since I was nine years old I've been training for this business."

"Are you loyal to SHIELD?"

"No. No I am not loyal to SHIELD. But I am loyal to the people I've met in the last few months who are part of it. I'm loyal to this team. I would die for any of them. For you. But SHIELD in general? Well I don't know how it is now, hopefully better because you seem an improvement, but under Fury it was corrupt and broken. I may not be loyal now, but let me help you fix it and someday I can be."

He gazed intently at me, trying to get a read. He looked older than I'd previously thought. Dark bags drooped below his eyes, and I wondered how long it had been since he'd had a full night. Weeks, months, maybe even years. And as the Director that wasn't going to change anytime soon. He lived a hard life, but at least he got to choose it. Like I was doing now.

"Welcome to SHIELD."

Daisy fit me with a badge and set up my security clearance. She even gave me one of the tablets they all carried, showing me a cool app which displayed every case they were facing in chronological order. I got a locker with my name on it for my tactical gear and weapons. Best of all, I got my very own bedroom and bathroom, both of which locked from the inside. Daisy showed me the laundry room and linen closet, helping me make my bed before bidding me good night. Her own room was three doors down and across the hall, and she promised to leave the door unlocked in case I needed her.

A king size bed took up most of my room, accompanied by a simple wooden dresser, floor length mirror, and a square cut in the wall Daisy told me was for extra storage. The walls were painted the color of cream, somewhere between brown and white. The tile floor was a rich chestnut, patterned to look like wood, matching the trim and bathroom door. I unlaced my boots, padding into the bathroom. Motion sensors flicked on bright fluorescent lights, illuminating a tidy little back and white bathroom. The cabinet under the sink held a men's and a women's toiletry kit, cleaning supplies, and two towels. Daisy had a,so left me a change of clothes, still with tags on everything.

After inspecting the room for cameras, I stripped down and stepped into the shower, closing the glass door behind me and turning the water on as hot as possible. I pulled my underthings from the laundry basket, cleaning them and hanging them in the sink to dry before starting on myself. The cell I'd been living in didn't have a shower, and I hadn't exactly been staying in five star hotels while on the run. Come to think of it, I hadn't had a shower since Hydra, and Hydra showers were just fifteen seconds of freezing water, thirty seconds to scrub, and fifteen more of water to rinse. I hadn't had real, lavish shower like this in five years. The women's kit had some good fruity shampoo and conditioner and cocoa butter body wash. I don't know how you combine chocolate and butter into something to scrub your body, but it got me clean and smelled delicious so I wasn't complaining. Under the flourescent lights my skin looked paler than usual, but that might have been a side effect of being inside so much for Hydra. I was never really black like my father, but I'd always been tan. Now I looked almost as white as my mother. My hair was hers, straight and pitch black, although she dyed hers. I had my father's eyes, but that was about it.

Sometimes I wondered what he'd think of me now. When Hydra took me in I was a weak little girl who needed protecting. Last he knew me, I was afraid of the dark. I thought it held monsters, and he'd never told me I was wrong, but he'd always promised to keep me safe from them. How would he feel now that I was the monster?

None of that, bad Freddie. It's true, but if you think about it you'll cry and have puffy eyes for your first day as a good guy. I pulled my underthings off the sink, quickly ripping the tags off the fitted black cotton pants and t-shirt and slipping them on. I tucked my hair into two tight french braids so I would wake with curly hair like my dads.

Ward always taught me to be the first one up, so at four I was wandering the extensive halls of the base. By five I knew my way around, even found a few shortcuts. I'd run most of it, pausing for the occasional vertical push up to work my arms too, and built up quite an appetite.

No one had to open doors for me anymore. My pass let me through all the doors I'd come across, and I found my way to the kitchen.

The fridge gave me an unexpected opportunity to study the dynamics of the team. Two jars on the counter held multicolored pens and an assortment of sticky notes, which also decorated the stainless steel of the two fridges. Each note held a little casual reminder, most of them dated.

'Simmons, experiments STAY in the lab.'

'Stop putting coffee grounds in the garbage disposal'

'Remember, three meals a day'

'Don't touch Lola' With a cute drawing of a little red sports car.

'Sorry Skye, had to throw out your leftovers, they were disgusting' Another was stuck halfway down that one that read 'P.S. Sorry, I meant Daisy.'

One was a different color than the rest, with a space cleared out so it was easily able to be read in its white on black writing. I ran my fingers along it lovingly, in openmouthed wonder.

'Freddie, anything not claimed is fair game. Cups and plates in the upper cabinets, silverware in the first drawer to the right'

The only note left touching it was 'No unsheathed weapons in the kitchen'. I guess that pertained to me too. They probably assumed Hydra didn't have manor rules like that, though the mess had _way_ stricter laws. Despite that, the note made my heart soar. Sure, it was just a tiny sticky note, and to most people it would be insignificant. To me it meant my place here was finalized, not just as a warrior, not just on mission, but as a part of the team. As a person, not a weapon. This little square of paper drove it home the way the lanyard, even the room hadn't. I was a part of this now, for better or for worse.

"Morning." Coulson twisted a mechanical hand into lock position, striding to the coffeemaker. "If you want something specific, add it to the list. Otherwise you can have anything without a name on it, and if it does you can ask."

The highest shelf had a rack of cereals, bungie corded tightly against the wall. Sadly for me, without my suit I could barely reach the bottom of the boxes. Even with me heeled combat boots, on tiptoe, I had to jump to grab one. Heels and a commanding presence helped me seem taller, but when it came down to it I was still fourteen, and my growth had been stunted by rigorous training.

Me and my bowl of frosted mini wheats leaned against the island while Coulson poured coffee, offering me a cup. I accepted it gratefully, breathing in the steam.

"Sorry if I disturbed your morning routine." The coffee was bitter and black, but to me it was delicious.

"Don't worry about it." He looked up from the book in his hand, looking amusingly like a stereotypical sitcom dad who's been forced to be serious far too early in the morning. "I was actually hoping you'd be here. What we talked about yesterday, your age, that's up to you to disclose to the others. The only one who knows is Daisy. You're on her team, I thought she had the right."

"Yes sir."

"And your family…" I tensed up, but he carried on anyway, not caring. "I know if I thought someone I loved was dead, but then learned they weren't… I would move Heaven and Earth to see them. We sort of did, rescuing Jemma. Don't you want to see them, make sure they're okay?"

"Of course, of course I want to check on them, to see that they're alive. But I can't let them see me." Coulson's brow furrowed, and I fought to explain it. "Who they lost was a kid, an innocent little girl. I can't replace her with who I am now. The girl they loved is dead, I'm trying not to make them have to lose her twice."

Comprehension dawned behind his eyes and he gave me a nod. Neither of us spoke again until the others were awake.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

The morning went by relatively peacefully. Daisy was sparring with Lincoln and invited me down to help, but after a few minutes their sexual tension drove me away. Instead I joined Fitz in the lab, but Jemma glaring at me and giving me the cold shoulder got hurtful fast, so I went to look for something else to do. I found Bobbi and Mack in the gym. They let me stay, even asked me to help them.

"Mack, you've gotta flip. You're big, but not too big to throw." They stood across from each other on the center mat, Bobbi looking exasperating with her hands on her hips.

"What?" Mack just looked amused. "Yes I am!"

"Challenge accepted." I unfolded down off the pull up bar where I was hanging by my knees doing sit ups.

"Bobbi, I think Daisy adopted us a monkey."

"Okay, punch me." He looked surprised as I stood across from him, unafraid. He was easily three times my size. So the matchup should have been laughable, but I was confident. "No powers, I promise. But I bet I can flip you."

"I don't wanna hurt you." It was flattering, but annoying. They still weren't taking me seriously, probably because they'd never seen me really in action.

"You're gonna get your ass kicked," Bobbi told him, gravely serious.

Mack looked mildly offended. "Why do you say that?"

"She doesn't pull her punches." At my quizzical look, she elaborated. "I mean, you did shoot me."

"I shot you?!" One more person I'd hurt. My stomach dropped to my toes and nausea spun my brain. "Come here, let me heal you-"

"Don't. Getting even won't make me feel better. Besides, it was your fault. Whatever you did while brainwashed, that was Hydra, not you." She offered me a pair of gloves, but I waved them away. "If you punish yourself, you'll never move on. You'll be stuck in the past. You joined SHIELD, you've moving on. Don't let yourself regress."

"You wanted to bet right?" Bobbi and I both looked over at Mack in surprise. "If you can flip me, which I doubt, I get Coulson to let you two and Daisy go on the next store run."

I must have seemed confused, because Bobbi leaned in and explained. "We all fight over it, it's nice to get off base for something that isn't a mission. It's like a vacation. Plus you get to buy everything you need without awkward conversations. Wait until you have to ask one of the guys to buy you tampons."

"Hey, I've always been cool about it."

"Yeah, but try Fitz."

"Fair point." He shrugged, and I forced him back to the point. "Right, right. If I'm right and you can't flip me, we hire a counselor to help you with the guilt."

"Okay. Now punch me."

With a sigh, he swung, slower than I was used to. I stepped in, grabbing his wrist and putting my back arched against him, using his own momentum to flip him up and over my shoulder. My grip on his wrist was secure, making it easy for me to cartwheel flip over him, landing purposefully sprawled so he was pinned. "I win."

Mack laughed as I got up and helped him to his feet. "Shoulda seen that coming. I've fought you before."

"You remember that?" He grunted, turning away. I guess that's why he was trying to help me, because he himself had been brainwashed. He knew what I was going through, except that he was actually innocent. "I'm sorry. But that wasn't you, you have to know that. Hey. Should I feel guilty for what I did while Hydra controlled me?"

"Of course not, it wasn't you." I spread my hands in an I-told-you-so gesture. "I see what you're saying. You're right, I'm being a hypocrite."

He smiled a carefree, unburdened smile. Bobbi gave me an appreciative nod from behind his back.

"How did you do that?" she asked, and this time I accepted the gloves.

"It's all about momentum. Hold on, I'll show you." I quickly unlaced my boots and tossed them and my socks off the mat. "When he swung, all his strength, which is a lot, was going into carrying his arm forward. You have to be really fast, but you just step inside his swing so your back is to him, grab his wrist, bend forward, tuck your head, plant your feet, and pull his arm. It basically table tops him over my shoulder, since he's so much taller than me."

She followed my instructions, slowly first so I could correct her, then all at once, flipping Mack.

"I already told you y'all won." He joked, standing slowly. "But I still don't know how to flip."

Bobbi and I helped him, taking turns sparring with him and giving pointers. He and Bobbi always fought for longer, maybe because they'd been friends a while and knew all of each other's moves, or maybe because they'd received the same SHIELD training. Probably a mix of both. I had no trouble beating him, despite the fact that I was really holding back. At Hydra, fights were either to the death or to the knockout. I knocked Mack out once, quickly healing him and falling unconscious for a few seconds. Mack said it was okay and genuinely didn't seem mad. How I deserved to be surrounded by such good people was beyond me.

Bobbi tried to explain how her batons worked, but engineering wasn't either of our strong suits. They seemed cool though, and she showed me how to use them.

"So are they Starktech?" I twirled them, wondering at the lightness of the metal. She said Fitz made them. "I think he used a Stark design. The bounce back feature is exactly like the tech in Iron Man's suit and Captain America's shield."

"I've seen that on video, but you had to be level nine to access those files. How did- oh, sorry." Bobbi looked at her feet. I guess it was awkward for them to think about my past with Hydra. Hell, it's awkward for me to think about it too, but there's no denying it happened. It made me who I am today, gave me the skills that let me join SHIELD. And as long as I kept reminding myself of that I'd be okay.

I sat down, pulling on my shoes. "I'm gonna go find Daisy. Hopefully he and Lincoln are done."

"Done what?" I cursed the redness of my face. Just as Ward taught me, I swallowed my embarrassment, but my ears stayed highlighted bright pink. I've never been able to control them and Mack noticed, letting out a puff of air.

"Am I the only single one on this team? There's them, you and Hunter." He fake glared at Bobbi. "And Fitz and Simmons."

"There's still Coulson and May. And me." I dropped him an over exaggerated wink, making him squirm and Bobbi laugh.

She offered me a hand, easily pulling my to my feet. "May has Andrew. He's her ex-husband who helps us with indexing new inhumans. He's a therapist. You joined Daisy's team, you'll probably have to see him at some point. And you pack a big punch, but you don't weigh _anything_. Share your secrets."

"Um, endless physical training and only enough food to keep you alive. I was small anyway, before Hydra picked me."

"Picked you?" Mack asked, and I realized I'd slipped up. Now he was gonna ask about Hydra, and then he'd hate me.

"Yeah, I gotta go." I turned and ran out the door. I can't tell them everything I've done, not when I was trying to start over. I knew I probably needed to think about it and get over it, but then it just drowned me. Repressing it worked fine. At least I didn't do what Grant did, creating falsities in my head. It was his only weakness, and one I did not share.

I was so distracted I almost ran into Daisy, but luckily I had quick reflexes and did a back handspring away from her when I sensed the danger. "Hey! Freddie, you scared me. You alright?"

I brushed the dust from my pants. "Yeah, I just freaked out a little when Mack probed me about Hydra. Think I hurt his feelings."

"Breathe in for four seconds, hold it for seven, and out for eight." It calmed me down, evening out my breathing. "Before I found hacking I had anxiety. I know it's not the same, but I know what it's like to have a past you don't wanna talk about. I was a foster kid who got passed around for sixteen years. I started hacking to help my lifelong search for my parents, which led to stories of murder. You can talk to me about anything, I won't judge. And I know most of the time you don't wanna talk, and I'm here if you just want company."

"Thanks." I did the breathing trick again, even though talking to Daisy wasn't stressful. Just the opposite actually, she made me feel like I didn't have to be stressed. Like I could be myself and that was okay. "I was actually looking for you. Coulson said you watched my interrogation?" I jutted out my chin, forcing myself to look both confident and threatening even though I really didn't want to threaten Daisy. But I had to. "Do not treat me differently just because I'm young. I'm one of your best warriors and I'm experienced in fields you've probably never heard of, not to mention everything you'd expect from an agent. I speak eleven languages passably, I'm trained in biochem, almost completed medical school, and I passed your field officers' test when I was ten. Don't underestimate me."

"I know you're tough, but you're only fourteen. I know you can handle it, but you shouldn't have to." Why couldn't anyone see I wasn't fourteen mentally? No one at Hydra had a problem with that.

"I'm not a child." Bruises bloomed on Daisy's arms and I forced myself to wind in the anger. They faded as quickly as they came, but I still felt sick. "I've done things you can't even imagine, bad and good. I have the life experience of multiple adults, yet you'd rather them than me. Why? Because they've had their eighteenth birthday? I thought you were smarter than that."

"I am. Freddie. I don't care how old you are. I care what's in your head, and in your heart."

"Good." My stomach churned, but my head felt better. It made sense now that I thought about it. She was desperate to put together the Secret Warriors team, so the only requirements were being Inhuman and not being a psycho killer. Actually, she let me join, so you needed only to be an Inhuman. "That was only half of why I was looking for you. I won a bet against Mack and he said my prize was you, me, and Bobbi going to the store?"

"I'll pilot, come on." Bobbi appeared behind us, taking a swing from her water. We followed her to the hangar, into one of the jets. "I told Coulson we were going, don't worry. He gave us some extra money to get Freddie new clothes."

We flew for almost an hour before I asked where we were going.

"California," Daisy responded. "Far from the base, in case we're flagged on Hydra's software. It's a restaurant supply store and a very shady walmart."

"Their software. I could… If this tablet is protected I can get into their system and reeeeeeeaally screw it up." Grins grew on both their faces. "Or I could just get you in Daisy, since I barely understand the system."

"What can you do to it?"

This time I was the one grinning evilly. By the time we landed I'd made it so their facial recognition would replace any of the team's faces with a realistic picture of a goat, random government officials made duckies parade around the edges of the screen, and every dog in the world became Coulson. The system had some other bugs I'd planted, with Daisy's help, that would take up weeks of their tech teams' time to fix. They'd know exactly who did it, but I wasn't bothered. I felt immeasurably safe sitting in the van with Bobbi and Daisy.

Daisy shook her head in frustration, gazing sadly around us. We were in some sort of basin, dry, cracked dirt leading up to a dying forest at the very top. "This used to be a reservoir."

"Why did they drain it?" And why was she so sad about it?

"They didn't." She glanced at me in the rear view. "It dried out. California's having a water crisis, but no one is doing anything about it. The government is weak right now, so wrapped up in next year's election and the war and the unrest in the Middle East they're ignoring the domestic issues killing America from the inside."

Once a hacktivist, always a hacktivist. I'd listened to her broadcasts a few times during my training. We had to learn all the different groups we might encounter, including the Rising Tide. they had always fascinated me, the way they fought and changed things with only their words. Personally, words had always escaped me. Fists were my go-to for problem solving. They can't hurt you if they're dead. Bobbi looked confused. I guess she hadn't been a part of the original team. Her jerk-off of an ex husband used to be a mercenary, but she seemed to have stronger moral fiber than that. Says the Hydra agent; I didn't have room to judge. We pulled into a shattered parking lot. The pavement looked like a meteor shower hit it, the people lining the sidewalks gazed greedily at us. For the first time in five years, I wished for my father and brother. I couldn't hurt anyone as a shield agent, and they'd always protected me in places like this where my skin made me unwelcome.

As we got out, Daisy made a point not to lock the doors. She simply walked inside, counting the cash Bobbi handed her. One guy whistled at us, but otherwise they let us pass in peace.

"Okay," I asked once the doors shut behind us, "What the Hell? I've walked more than my fair share of bad neighborhoods, and those guys never would have left us alone. Did you make an example out of one? Do I need to?"

"No." Daisy looked startled but amused. "We have a really nice car, and we left it unlocked. Around here that's not an invitation, it's a threat. Come on, everybody grab a cart."

We filled the three carts with giant packages of food, peanut butter, cereal, meats, sauces, each in giant palettes. Daisy said this was where she'd go in the event of a zombie apocalypse, which made sense. A dozen people could live their whole lives here and barely run low on supplies. We laid flat the back row of seats in the van, stacking it almost to the roof. The Walmart was harshly lit, washing us out and getting us more disgusted looks.

Daisy and Bobbi discussed everyone's preferences on each thing. Coulson liked a special coffee, Fitz liked a certain spice, Simmons wanted Diet Coke, Hunter would never shut up if he didn't get his M&Ms. the list went on and on. Daisy had her phone out, constantly referring to a picture of the fridge and a group text.

"Coulson wants us back on base as soon as possible" Bobbi announced, looking at her phone. "Hunter's chasing a lead, and he thinks this is it. It's the first time he's been invited on a mission. He's undercover in Hydra, hunting Ward."

"We've only got a little left. Bobbi, you get the shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste and tampons. I'll get razors, deodorant, and I need new eyeliner and Coulson broke his sunglasses again. We'll meet you in clothes, okay Freddie? Get a couple outfits." We each bustled off to our own tasks, Bobbi with the cart.

I had forgotten there were so many clothing options. Even the sizing made no sense. Why were some numbers and some small, medium, and large? Why were all the guys' clothes blues and grays while the girls' section looked like a Skittles factory explosion? And why the hell were even the smallest girls shorts so short? For kids, come on. Bras were so goddamn expensive! I ended up with three sports bras, shorts, jeans, and two pairs of leggings, a sweatshirt and a t-shirt, all in black except the bras. Luckily, underwear and socks were pretty cheap so I could get a bunch.

I sensed danger just before the man bumped into me and had him in an arm bar the second his shoulder touched mine. His hair flopped forward and I could see, burned into the base of his skull, a tiny Hydra symbol.

"Who are you?" I demanded. "There were no boys in the program!"

He laughed bitterly. "There were before you. Then they decided we weren't good enough and dumped us all back on the streets. Those of us they didn't kill."

"No one should have that done to them, but this won't make it better. I can help you."

"No," He hissed. "SHIELD didn't help us, no, SHIELD hunted us down and watered the sidewalks with our blood. Mr. Garrett and Mr. Grant found us, trained the survivors. I owe him my life. But so do you, Jamie Frederick."

"Grant sent you." The realization hit me all at once. Of course Grant would be searching for me, he'd stressed quite a bit that I was too dangerous to have working against them. "So you're here to kill me? So far you're not doing such a great job."

He shook sporadically under my grip, and I remembered the cyanide capsules they used to embed in agents' cheeks. It took me a second to realize he was laughing. I tightened my hold to the point where a normal person would have a broken arm. "Uh, uh. You hurt me, he hurts them."

"Who?" I shouldn't have let us split up, he wasn't alone. They must have overwhelmed Daisy and Bobbi. But the building hadn't shaken, so how?

Tears ran down his face from the pain and the laughter. "Devin and Ray," He whispered defiantly. Shock rolled up my spine. Daisy and Bobbi could handle themselves, but… No. No falling apart. I released him quickly.

"What does Grant want?"

Cackling, he flicked a picture toward me. I caught it with numb fingers as he disappeared, probably home to Grant. Daisy and Bobbi materialized from the stacks, guns out. Their faces told me they'd heard it all.

"We need to get back to base," I told them, my mind twisting in dizzying circles. My heart pumped pure guilt through every millimeter of my body.

Dark spirals of pain twisted through the air around me, and they exchanged a frightened look. Daisy took my basket and dumped it in the cart, which Bobbi took to checkout while Daisy ushered me to the car. Bobbi joined us quickly and raced to the plane, leading me into a seat. My nose, ears, mouth, and eyes were all bleeding, but I was in too much shock to notice past the dampness. Daisy tried to talk to me, but I wasn't hearing right.

After awhile I became aware of the crumpled paper still gripped tightly in my fist. It snapped me back to reality, and I smoothed it roughly. On one side, a note from Ward, which Daisy read over my shoulder. On the other, a photo. Two men tied up in the dark, dozens of people behind them holding guns to their heads.

"That's my dad, Ray, and my brother, Devin. I don't know how long he's had them, but they're not hurt. He wants me to go to him, let him control me again. Then he'll let them go." I stroked the photo. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop staring at Devin. "He's all grown up," I murmured.

"What's wrong?" Daisy asked. I gave her a look, motioning the picture. "No, I mean other than this. The Freddie I know would be planning, searching for a solution. Do you not want to rescue them?"

"Of course I want them safe, I just, I don't want them to see who I've become. I'm not the same person they lost all those years ago." I tucked the photo into my pocket, shivering. Daisy left for a moment, returning with my new sweatshirt.

"Freddie, they're not gonna care that you're not the same. You're still family. I'd kill to get you back if I ever lost you. And yeah, I never knew you when they did, but the Freddie I know is pretty great." I turned my face away. She didn't know what I'd done, all the murders, the innocents I've hurt and tortured. Anna. "I know there's a lot about your past that I don't know, but that goes both ways. You don't know the bad things I've done, but you like me anyway, right? The past doesn't matter. What matters is what you do about it now. When May was training me she said all the time that you can't do anything to change the past. All you can do is try to balance the scales, do enough good to cancel out the bad. And you're doing good, Freddie, you're helping make the world a safer place for everyone. And your father and brother will see that."

"I'm gonna listen to music a minute." She nodded, giving me a soft smile. I closed my eyes, putting on headphones she loaned me. Daisy stroked the hair away from my face, then left to talk to Bobbi. I could feel where her fingers brushed my forehead all the way home. She didn't fear me, but she didn't think she was above me either. She cared about me, and, most oddly, trusted me.

Maybe an hour from home, their voices shook me from my stupor.

"Oh my god, Andrew."

"May…"

"Bobbi, she is going to _kill_ Hunter."

I took out my earbuds, joining them up front. "What happened?"

"There was a gas station explosion. May's ex-husband was in it. He's alive, on his way to the base right now." Bobbi filled me in. "It should show up on your tablet too. We already input your case. Coulson made me chief officer, so I'm technically in charge of the case, but I won't do anything you're uncomfortable with. It's your family, you should be the one to save them."

"They're not my family anymore, the team is. But I owe them a debt, for keeping me alive for the first nine years. And I need to balance the scales." Daisy smiled at me fondly. "I hurt them so much, letting Hydra tell them I died. And now I'll balance that out by saving them. Once they're safe I'm never seeing them again, and they can't ever know it was me. That'll only hurt them worse."

"Okay." Bobbi nodded, all business. I like how she treats me with respect, as if we were equals. In abilities that was certainly true, but from what Fitz had told me she was also incredibly smart. "I'm not allowed back in the field yet, but we can't wait. Where does he want you to meet him?"

"An airsoft park in rural New York. but first, Bobbi? Fitz said you could teach me to use the weapons Hydra put in me?" I knew Grant wanted me there since the picture read "Meet where you got your name." Frederick Fields. That was where I'd received my very first training. When he saved me, it took him only hours to decide I was a good candidate for the Shadow program even though I would be the oldest in my group, and I'd have to advance four or five times as fast as the others. By the next morning he had me hailing Hydra, but before turning me over to them he promised to help me get revenge. The best way to teach me was by immersing me in a non-lethal version of my job. Airsoft. We stole ourselves weapons and played all day. He taught me to shoot, how to move, how to detect others around you, and, most importantly, to never hesitate. Then he gave me a real gun and showed me how to track people down. Over the next six days we found and executed everyone who'd bullied me, from the forty year old ex-assassin who mocked my play on an online video game to the six year old at my old dojo who stole and threw away my shoes because it was funny that we couldn't afford new ones. And his parents, who'd laughed at the story and defended him. Thirty four people in all. At first I cried, but Grant fixed that right up. We were righting wrongs. Of course, I would have done anything for him. He gave me a new life when I had nothing, trained me well enough that in one week I advanced to my proper aged class, set to kill even the most experienced killers. Turns out I was a good fit for Hydra. Vicious, cutthroat, loyal, tough under pressure. Although I was the weakest one for a long time, and most of the time I was faking and blustering my way through. But I never forgot, so I never hesitated.

"Yeah, when we get back to base." Bobbi looked up from her tablet, where she had some cyborg schematic.

"Good," I said, letting some of my anger show. "Because I've got two to save and one to kill." And this time, I won't hesitate.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

It turned out the cyborg schematic was me. May had taken Bobbi on mission with her, so it was Fitz and I trying to figure out the weapons.

"No! God no, not that one!" Fitz yelled as I willed the metal plate ring to rise from my arm.

"I know, I just wanted to look at it. I'm not gonna bring down the base." I rolled my eyes, examining my upper forearm. Just before my elbow was a three inch wide metal sheet the curled around like a bracelet which camouflaged into my skin, but rose about two inches off my arm on command. Inside it looked like a revolver, with every inch sectioned off into barrels containing what we determined to be some very tiny but very dangerous missiles.

Fitz marvelled at the technology, the way it was set for me to fire them with mental commands, not certain trigger movements the way he originally thought. The weapons fascinated me, how so many important companies worked with Hydra, whether they knew it or not. The Stark tech was probably stolen though. No matter where they got the parts, they'd built me back up as a fighting machine. Lasers in my pointer fingers, missiles in my arm, wrists and ankles which could (painfully) burn off ropes or even chains, super-muscles and something Fitz explained worked like springs in my legs, the list went on and on. I even had claw-like poisonous blades that popped out of my fingernails. The problem was, it all made me sick to my stomach to look at, a constant reminder of what I'd let them do to me. How I was their murderous pet they sicced on anyone they felt like.

I retracted the missiles and sheathed the claws, marvelling at the smoothness of the mechanism. "So why doesn't this hurt?"

The skin around each piece is synthetic, with an almost imperceptible slit it comes up through." He finished setting the nearest backstop back upright. We were in an old, emptied out cellar looking room; a badly lit long cement stretch at the lowest level of the base. "Try not to hit the floor this time, yeah?"

I nodded, pointing at the targets one by one and carving them up. The far ones took two passes to cut the metal cleanly, but it was almost impossible to aim that well. The lasers did hurt, because they heated up my fingers to the point of blistering. The last one finally cut, a huge metal section calving off and crashing to the floor, shaking the room. Fitz stumbled almost into the beam, and I threw my hand upward to avoid slicing him to ribbons. Which, of course, meant I sliced a groove in the ceiling.

"Okay, we should probably go see if we gouged anything important." He flashed me a teasing grin and headed back up the stairs.

"Hey, thanks." I followed, easily catching up and outpacing him, jogging backward so we could talk. "Thanks for helping me with this. And for not asking me a thousand questions like the others."

"Of course I'll help. I know what it's like to watch Ward hurt the people you love. And how are you not falling?" I shrugged, still backpedaling up the stairs. Just to tease him, I leapt straight up into the air, catching hold of a pipe. This section of the base was older and had been left unfinished, so a layer of beams and piped criss-crossed around below the ceiling. I swung upside down, doing backflips onto beams and walking on pipes, still ahead and now above Fitz. he stepped into the hallway, looking slightly winded. "That's not even fair. I think you're half monkey or something."

Letting my feet swing down, I jumped from beam to beam, like they were monkey bars. I stopped on the last one where the hall met the main base and flipped upside down, hanging by my knees to watch Fitz approach.

"You look like a bat." He crossed his arms with mock impatience, teasingly tapping his foot.

"Actually, you look like a bat. It's all a matter of perspective." I dismounted in a flip, giving an over dramatic bow as he clapped.

Fitz threw an arm around me, grinning goofily. "Come on monkey, let's go to the lab. Where I'm the powerful one."

"You wish. Simmons is the powerful one in there." His humor was so infectious, I realized I hadn't thought about Grant since we got back home. My smile went away, but then Fitz was dramatically opening the door for me and I found myself forgetting again.

"You've worked in a lab before," He pointed out, laughing at my puzzlement. "You're comfortable. Most people feel out of place, and they're overly careful around the instruments."

"Well, you're right. But I worked in a medical lab, not a tech lab like this."

"That's Jemma's science. The lab is both." He jostled our shoulders, patting my arm where he held it. I turned just in time to see Simmons walking by, hurt clearly etched across her young face. Disentangling myself from Fitz, I skidded out into the hall and called her name.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"I'm perfectly fine, thank you," She said stiffly, uncharacteristically cold and distant. Her tone hurt, but she was obviously upset, so I shoved my own feelings aside.

"I realized I never got to properly thank you. I mean for taking care of me when we first met, and being so kind to me even though I was Hydra. You and Fitz and Daisy were the first ones to make me doubt everything I'd been told about SHIELD." Her face remained a mask, but Fitz smiled and gave me a shoulder pat. "Your kindness helped me become a warrior for good instead of a mindless drone. So yeah, thank you."

"I did my job. Now, if you'll excuse me…" She shouldered past me, stalking away until she was out of sight. Fitz looked between us helplessly until I motioned for him to go after her. He was obviously crazy about her, even though right now she was being really bitchy.

All of a sudden, every molecule of my body was buzzing. Somewhere someone was changing. I focused on the feeling, thinking of the pain as a pathway I could follow. Suddenly the pain stopped, replaced by a warm feeling, like a sip of cocoa in a blizzard. I let instinct take over, throwing off the feeling. This person should change. They would use it for good, I could feel that.

The feeling slowly dissipated, but my excitement didn't. I found Coulson in his office and quickly told him what had happened. He seemed incredibly pleased, which was a step in the right direction for us.

"So you're a human diviner. You decide who doesn't deserve power." He gave me a little smile as I sat across from him. "I know that's a lot of pressure on you, but you can handle it. You've handled every challenge this world has to throw at an agent, and more, and you're not even old enough to vote. I'm sorry one more responsibility has been piled on your shoulders, but you'll get through it."

"I lied to you, sir. I didn't even realize until earlier, but what I said in my interrogation was wrong. I mean, I would die for any of you, I'm loyal to the team, because the team brought me into SHIELD. The team _is_ SHIELD. And I _am_ loyal to SHIELD. Not SHIELD as it was before, but your SHIELD. Protection. I guess it took the kidnapping for me to realize it, but I'd do this for anyone, not just family. Everyone innocent deserves protection." I took a deep breath. Bearing my soul to him physically hurt. "But I think I can't be trusted, if I'm going to have these breakdowns where I have to deal with someone else's change. What if that happens in the middle of a fight? I don't think I can be trusted anymore, not the way I was before."

The side of his mouth quirked up into an amused half smile. "I know." That wasn't possible. I didn't even know. "When you said you weren't loyal, it read as a lie. But I thought you needed to figure that out for yourself. Now I know I can trust you."

"That's funny since I came in here to tell you you probably couldn't." I wondered aloud. He only smiled wider.

"And that's why I can. Even though it meant losing all you've been working toward, you told the truth. I'm making you chief officer for your missing family."

Daisy burst in, looking stressed. "The airsoft park, is it Frederick Fields?" i nodded, looking at the tablet in her outstretched hand. It was a news article.

"Frederick Fields under evacuation due to bomb threat," I read, anger seizing my gut. "Grant's clearing it out. He wants me there _now_."

"Freddie, it's your call. What do you want to do?" Coulson gazed at me levelly, and I knew he was being serious. It was up to me. It was even more responsibility, but I was ready for it. It was my job to save my family, not anyone else's.

"Daisy, can you pilot a quinjet?" She reminded me that we could autopilot them, and I took a calming breath. "We'll take six, it's closest and fully gassed up. Can you have two from Operations join us, Coulson? Good. Wheels up in fifteen."

Daisy went to the armory while I changed in the locker room. It felt good to be back in my tactical gear, the strong fabric woven with metal so different from the cotton I had been wearing, but so much more natural. A tiny mirror sat against the back wall of my locker, and I caught sight of my reflection. My hair was so long now. That would just get in my way in a fight. I slipped a knife out of my belt, hacking my hair off even with my shoulders, dumping handful after handful in the trash. I french braided it flat down the back of my neck as I hurried out to the hangar, to where Daisy and two heavily armed men waited. Once we were almost there I stood up in my seat, motioning the operations men over.

"Alright, here's the plan. I'm going to infiltrate alone-"

"Freddie, I'm not letting you face them alone," Daisy interrupted, clearly not enthused with my plan.

"I'm chief officer, it's my call. Don't worry though, that's not the whole plan. I'll slip through the vents, if he catches me I'll feign surrender. If things go sideways I'll signal Fitz through the smartwatch Fitz gave me. You come in guns blazing." Daisy looked like she was going to contradict me, so I held up a set of earplugs. "He can't reset me if I can't hear him."

The only problem, I also wouldn't be able to listen for Ray and Devin, or Grant. Luckily though, Fitz had given me a present. Goggles with thermal imaging.

We hovered maybe a hundred yards from the outermost course in the park, sending Fitz's drones down to image it. Daisy held a triple screen device showing us in orange the people inside.

"So the patrols pass my entry point every fifteen seconds. That's not much of a window, but I can do it. So there are thirty one patrols in all. Sixty two well armed Hydra soldiers. And they're crossing each other's paths, so we won't be able to take any out ahead of time. These two figures here." My heart contracted and I had to swallow twice to keep my voice steady. "That'll be the prisoners. It's the most heavily guarded section. But according to this blueprint I got online a vent leads directly there. Now, for the part of the plan you'll like. Daisy, circle quietly but quickly around the building and plant the noisemaker Fitz gave us, then come back to the others. Station yourselves here, where the most patrols pass. Stay hidden until I signal you, at that point you set off the noisemaker and attack. Stay safe, don't give away the plane's location. I'll give you that signal when I'm about to drop from the vent to give myself cover, and hopefully so we can take out more of them. Hopefully they'll think we decided to ambush and brought a huge force, and they'll go to deal with you, leaving me fewer people to deal with to get them out. I'll turn on my coms when we're escaping and we'll meet you back at the jet. Everyone good?"

They nodded, the men going to the back of the plane to get the noisemaker and load their weapons. Daisy smiled at me almost apologetically. All I wanted was to stay here with her. My old family was down there, but my new family was back on base and right here, and if I died down there I'd never see them again. I leapt awkwardly toward her, enveloping her in a tight hug and darted to the open door, leaping out into the night.

I landed with a roll, racing through the brush and fake obstacles until the complex was in sight. Crouched behind a bush, I could see my first challenge. The vents had been changed since those plans were printed. The lower one was too small to fit my shoulders, and the upper one was twelve feet off the ground.

"What's wrong? Remember your powers." Daisy whispered over the coms. She'd noticed that I kept forgetting I had powers, which I actually had again. I slipped into invisibility. Now that they couldn't see me, I slid right out into the midst of the guards, dancing between them and to the wall. The vents were reinforced and welded shut. Grant was expecting me. Fuck.

Time for plan B.

I walked calmly to the front entrance, just out of sight of the soldiers. And then I turned visible and walked straight at them with my hands up.

"My name is Jamie Frederick, and I'm here for Grant. One of you wanna arrange the meeting?" I held my hands out, wrists up. That spurred them into action, handcuffing and tugging me blindfolded through a huge indoor arena. We stopped abruptly, a soldier on each of my arms to hold me still as rough hands ripped off the bag on my head. The arena was almost pitch black, but I could see the armed guards around me and scattered throughout the fake forest. Right in front of me stood Ama, comfortably leaning his squat body on a massive shotgun like it was a cane. I hadn't seen him since the surgery. "Ama?"

"No Jamie." The inflections were all wrong, the shortness of the answer, his comfort with a gun. He shifted so he was holding the weapon, smiling at me in a strangely familiar way despite how alien it looked on his round face. The _wrongness_ of the situation made my stomach do flips and stopped me from reaching out to him. His face changed slightly, like he was listening intently. And then it clicked.

"Grant is controlling you," I realized. That sick feeling returned, but I kept my face neutral, then exasperated. I forced myself to sound amused but annoyed, just what Grant wanted. "Really, Grant? Are the theatrics necessary? I fucked up, which you know I have a tendency to do without someone telling me what to do. Remember that time I lost my coms and ended up wandering in the middle of the desert instead of waiting for evacuation? Honestly, I'm not even sure why you trusted me as much as you did."

"So, what, you want back in?" The smug smile was just what I wanted. Grant had _expected_ me to come crawling back to him. "What about your family?"

"You're my family. They're just too people I used to live with. What did they ever do for me? They didn't even notice my depression, for months, they didn't notice my not eating or that I was taking the kitchen knives. They didn't care, so why should I?" It wasn't hard to pretend. That bitterness was real, and Grant new it. Sure, I was good at hiding it, but they really screwed up with not noticing any of it. "Let me prove my allegiance again. What do I have to do?"

He paused to think it over. "When you heal people, you absorb their pain. Does that work for powers?"

"I have no idea. Probably." I knew where this was going, and it terrified me. I'd originally assumed he'd tell me to kill them, which would mean I would be let in their room to save them.

Two masked people dragged matching bundles across the floor, depositing two hogtied dark skinned men a few feet in front of me. One sat up quickly, intelligent eyes quickly sweeping the scene and pulling the other man up so they were back to back. The first man was young and well built, muscles straining against the cords. The other was older, his wrinkled face and gnarled hands from years of hard labor making him seem ages older than he was, as they always had. I kept my features blank, looking at Ama instead.

"What's going on, Freddie? It's been twenty minutes, where are you?" Daisy whispered into my ear. Quiet as the coms were, the soldiers must have heard them, because one reached over quickly and slit the wire. Luckily, neither one was smart enough to tell Grant.

"They're going to turn them," Ama motioned the men who dragged them in, now armed with fish oil pills. "And you will absorb their power. Then kill them."

I saw no way out but a straight up fight, which I would be too busy fighting to save them from terrigenesis. Not that it was a bad thing, but they should have the choice to have powers or not. Even if I became invisible they would fire on this spot faster than I could move, and the soldiers would still kill them.

Wow, I'm dumb. Invisibility. Use the powers.

With a twitch of my fingers, I hit the man off to my right with food poisoning. He turned on his heel and vomited, making the next closest guy jump away and accidentally fire his gun, right onto a woman's foot. She yelled, giving me enough cover to slip my cuffs and press the button on my watch. Within seconds an explosion rocked the building and the sound of gunfire sounded so loudly it got through the wax in my ears. Ama turned away from me, so I couldn't read his lips anymore. Half the men took off, distracting those with the fish oil long enough for me to flip over Devin and Ray's heads, twisting to kick one in the face while wrapping the other's neck and bringing him down hard on his back. Releasing him, I spun and took out the first man by his knees, grabbing him by the throat and smashing his head into the floor, snapping his neck. They were firing on me now, so I rolled away from Devin and Ray. crouched behind a fake rock outcropping, I bemoaned my lack of guns. But I could do plenty without one.

Any second now it would occur to them that Devin and Ray made great hostages. Time to be stupid brave.

I vaulted over the rock, grabbing the closest soldier and slitting his throat with the knife at his belt. Using him as a meat shield, I advanced, picking off everyone I saw with his pistol. The clip ran out as the soldiers returned on Grant's orders. Ama was firing, but he couldn't aim and mostly hit the ground not far in front of him. I reached the tree behind which Devin was shielding Ray. one intelligent soldier reached them first, but Devin punched him in the balls, and I snapped his neck when he bent. Snatching up his pistol, I shot off their ties.

"Get me a gun and I'll help you!" Devin yelled into my ear. The plugs must have fallen out. The thought of my gentle big brother killing someone made me pissed beyond belief. Because of me, he might have to hurt someone. Hell no.

I shoved them backwards until we reached a wall, pressing them against it. Anger crashed through me, but we were in the position I wanted. Knelt in front of them, I smashed my fist into the ground, screaming until I could hear nothing else. Waves of darkness rolled out from my hand, debilitating their soldiers into bloody, crumpled heaps. The only pain I sent behind me was darkness, obscuring their vision so they couldn't see the blood running in rivulets and pools across the floor, or hear the screams and snapping bones.

Ama and I locked eyes, and I saw the control fall away as a single ragged hole appeared in his chest. I screamed at Devin and Ray to stay, splashing blood all over myself as I raced through it to where he lay. "Ama, stay with me. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Jamie-" he coughed, spewing blood onto my face, "You know, after twenty years of brainwashing, you're the only thing I don't want to forget. They made me a puppet. I guess you understand. Why did you sell me out? They changed me, they made me-" he spewed blood again, his breath weak and rattling. "I always wanted to tell you to get away, but all I could do was help Hydra. Go, Jamie. Don't, don't be like me."

"It wasn't your fault," I told him firmly. This was too much. He'd been more of a slave than I was, and I'd never known. I barely recognized him. I was watching the death of a possibility, not a person. He just smiled up at me, both of us soaked in his blood.

"They took my family, never let me tell you," He broke into chokes and gasps again, tears running down his face, struggling to force words out despite his lungs filling with blood. "Now I can see them again."

The strange smile returned, and I couldn't take it anymore. I snapped his neck as swiftly as I could.

Once I'd led Devin and Ray out of the room I let them see again, walking ahead of them. They whispered about Hydra and me. I was unrecognizable, probably even to my own friends who knew me know, with green war paint and drying blood covering every inch of skin available and soaking my uniform, dripping off my legs and leaving a bloody path behind me for them to follow. I consulted the compass on my watch, studiously ignoring them until Devin spoke.

"Thank you. What's your name?" He called out. "Are you with the local P.D.?"

"No." I lowered my voice some, making myself as different and scary as possible. The pistols in each hand should deter the asking of many questions, but I was still nervous. "My name is Freddie, and I'm not police. I assume they were paid off by your captors to cover this up."

"If you're not police, why save us? I'm grateful, don't get me wrong, and forever indebted to you." He was definitely afraid of me. Emotions warred in my gut, dominated as usual by anger and self-loathing. I shoved it all down, keeping my shoulders straight and my head held high. "Are you SHIELD? I heard them say they were Hydra, and I know both still exist."

I led them outside, to the clearing I knew would hold Daisy, and then she could answer their questions. Just as we entered, she lowered the back of the jet, leading them in as I turned around. The compound glowed softly, and I lifted my arm, launching a missile, blowing it up in a massive fireball.

"Where should we drop them?" I asked her, sitting in the pilot's seat so I didn't have to interact with them.

"Can you pilot?" Daisy asked. I nodded silently. "Take us home."

"Daisy, we can't-"

"They need medical attention Freddie, and somewhere safe to lie low. Can you think of somewhere better?" Her gaze challenged me to argue, and I knew we shouldn't in front of the other agents. As usual, she was right. With a sigh, I took off, setting us a course for home as Daisy talked to Devin and Ray. "My name's Daisy Johnson, we're with SHIELD. Are either of you hurt?"

After a bit I tuned them out, focusing on the plane, letting everything but the drone of the engine fade to the background, banishing all the emotions until Daisy slid into the copilot's seat.

"Why are we taking them home?" I asked angrily, not looking at her. She just rolled her eyes a little, exasperated by my apparent stupidity.

"You know we have to keep them somewhere safe, and Coulson wants to talk to them. And I think you should. Talk to them, I mean."

"No!" What about this didn't make sense to people? "I just killed sixty three people. Grant wasn't there, he sent an old friend in his place, brainwashed. They're terrified of me, Daisy. The girl they would want back is dead. I'm just a monster in her skin."

"You're not a monster." She stood as we descended, giving me a little shoulder squeeze. "I think they deserve to know you're alive, and choose whether or not to accept the new you. I know that's scary, but think about it."

I laid on my bed, head hanging off the side. Increasing the blood in my brain was, sadly, not helping me make decisions.

Someone knocked on my door softly. "It's Fitz." I told him to come in, not bothering to get up. "Hey monkey, you okay?"

"I'm trying to decide." He nodded, plopping down next to me as I sat up. "I don't want to hurt them, and showing them their baby girl has grown up into _me_. That's a hurt even I can't heal. And if they accept me as I am, they then have to lie every day knowing I could die, worrying. This is a dangerous job. I don't want them to have to lose me twice. I can't think of anything more painful, and I've been in the pain business a long time now."

"That makes sense. Don't you miss them?" He asked, looking sideways at me. "I know I miss my family, and I saw them a few months ago. How long has it been?"

"Six years. _Of course_ I miss them."

"They're not the same people you left. They grew and changed and so many things have happened to them you've probably never imagined." I shrugged, not wanting to think about all the bad things they'd had to endure because of me. "But you miss them. You love them still, yeah? You're happy and relieved that after six years they're alive and well."

"Yeah."

He gave me a sad smile. "So why would it be any different for them?"

I'd never thought about it that way. Sure, I'd probably changed more than them, but maybe we could find a way for our new selves to fit together. It wouldn't be our old dynamic, but that didn't make us not still family. Sure, the team was the family I chose, but I had been happy with them.

"Will you come with me?" It took him a second to realize I was agreeing.

"One thing first." He pulled a little bag out of his pocket, a crumpled dark blue gift bag. "Coulson put your birthday on the calendar, and I know it's not for a few days but I thought you might want this now."

I unravelled it carefully, revealing a gray camo tank top, soft and light as a feather. "Everyone needs at least one non-black non-tactical piece of clothing," He said with a smile, looking nervous. I was speechless. I really meant something to him, maybe even as much as he did to me. I threw my arms around him hard enough he fell backwards, laughing and giving me a little pat on the back.

"Fitz-" Simmons stopped abruptly in the doorway, awkward and angry. I guess Fitz was in trouble, so I got off him and tossed on the shirt over my sports bra. She calmed a bit when I had a shirt on. Maybe, as a doctor, the scars on my back and stomach were weirding her out? I slipped the knife from my right boot, cutting off the tag and replacing the blade. She refused to meet my eyes.

"Fitz? You coming?" He nodded, but Simmons stayed in the doorway blocking us.

"Fitz?" There was an odd little catch in her voice, but why would she be upset? Because Fitz was coming with me? "Don't you want to come with me to the lab?"

"I'll be there in a bit, I'm going with Freddie first, okay?" He grabbed my hand, leading me out of the room and past Simmons.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

I stood outside the door, Fitz behind me. He gave me a little smile, pushing open the door. I let go of his hand and stepped in, looking as confident as possible. Daisy, Devin, and Ray sat on the couches, Daisy beaming up at me.

"No, stay," I told Daisy as she rose to give us some privacy. She scooted over so Fitz and I could join her, me sandwiched in the middle. "Hi. How are you two doing, now that you've had some time to process what happened?"

"Glad to be alive, thanks to you," Devin answered, smiling gratefully. Ray leaned over, whispering something to him. Devin grimaced, then answered my questioning look. "Sorry, you just look like someone we used to know. My sister. But you're older than she would have been."

"Would have been?" I know it was mean, but I was still afraid. Afraid they wouldn't want me.

"She died." The words held so much pain, I knew Fitz was right. They missed me.

I struggled to hold together my professional facade. "Any other family?"

"I have a wife and two other children," Ray spoke up. So I had either either stepsiblings or half siblings now. Strange how much things can change in six years. "And my future daughter in law. Is there any way we could let them know we're safe?"

"Sure, if you give me their address I can go make sure they're safe, and tell them you're okay." Daisy took out her phone as Fitz started tapping my arm.

"I forgot to tell you." He whispered. "Your brother's a cop."

I know why he told me. My other fear, them living in worry, I didn't have to think about that. They were used to living with Devin being in danger, and they still led happy lives.

"Why were we taken?" Devin asked me. "The men said we were hostages for someone named Jamie, but neither one of us knows a Jamie. And why not take the whole family? It doesn't make sense."

"I'm Jamie. You were taken to draw me out, and for that I'm very sorry." Fitz put a hand on my back to reassure me he was there. I knew he could feel my shaking, but I didn't care. "But my name wasn't always Jamie. It used to be Claire. Claire Grace Ortholo."

They both looked like they'd been shot, clutching each other's hands. It was Ray who spoke first. "Claire, Claire died almost six years ago." I turned to Devin, my throat too thick to speak, humming the lullaby he'd sung me every night as long as I could remember, the same one our mother had sung to him until I was born and she left.

"Claire, Claire." My father sobbed, reaching forward and pulling me into a tight hug. I tensed, the lump in my throat instantly drying into fear. Fitz saw the panic, quickly but gently separating us. Shame built in my chest. Had I really become so fucked up that I couldn't hug my own father?

Devin just gazed at me in wonder. "How…? And you're SHIELD?" All of a sudden he turned angrily to Daisy. "She's fourteen! SHIELD uses child soldiers now?"

"I became a soldier the day they told you I died." I winced at the agony painting Devin's face, debating with myself how much I should tell them. But I'd already said it, so it was time for the truth. I told them about how Grant saved me, that he trained me and I became an agent of Hydra, glossing over how I was trained and everything I'd done. I told them how I was on mission one day and got captured by SHIELD, how we learned I had been brainwashed and they helped me straighten out and let me join. "So now I'm an agent of SHIELD. How have you guys been doing?"

Ray looked crushed, crumpled against the sofa. "I'm so sorry. I've wished for six years I could apologize, say I'm sorry for never being home, so sorry I didn't notice what you were going through-"

"It wasn't your fault." How many times was I going to say this in one day? "It was the fault of those who hurt me, but I've already taken care of them. And now I want to hear about you. I have step siblings? And a sister in law?"

"A step sister and a half brother, actually. When you died I realized I'd been a bad father, so I went back to school online and got a degree. I'm a children's therapist. Carla was a dentist working in my building. We married three years ago, and her baby daughter came with her. Her name is Grace, after you. Last year we had Justin, your half brother," Ray told me. Devin dug a photo out of his pocket, handing it over. It was a christmas card, my father and his new wife, a tall, sturdy dark woman who held an adorable baby boy, each of them with a hand on a little girl who was maybe three. Devin had his arm around a slender woman who was even paler than our mother had been. They all grinned from ear to ear, obviously surrounded by love. My heart ached. How can you miss something that you never had?

"That's Justin, this is Grace. That's my fiance Angela. You're going to love them Claire." His smile radiated such pure joy I almost wanted to go home with them. "I've told Angela so many stories. Remember dad's first week working nights? She said that's what made her agree to marry me. And she loves you already, since the day I told her about when our tv broke."

They both laughed, making Fitz smile. "What?"

"She didn't want me to be bored, so she would dress up and put on little plays. Usually it was princesses and knights, but my favorite was when you did the crime show." I smiled, embarrassed. Devin was laughing, probably remembering how silly I looked at all of five years old pretending one of my stuffed animals was killed and I had to track down the killer. "She pretended Dad had killed one of her stuffed animals, so when he came home she leapt out and yelled 'freeze!' He screamed and she cried."

He pulled out his wallet, slipping from one of the card slots a well worn photo of a little girl in a sequin dress a few sizes too big and huge sunglasses, in the middle of twirling one end of the bright pink feather boa around her neck. It was so foreign, I almost didn't recognize myself. Too happy, too carefree.

"Claire-"

"It's Freddie actually," I interrupted. Daisy tensed up beside me, putting away her phone before I could see.

"We've gotta go," She said to Fitz, reluctantly turning to me. "Coulson wants you there too. Did you read the case on Bobbi and May's search for Ward?"

"Of course. And of course he wants my help Daisy, I'm a field agent too, and an Inhuman. I've got more experience than you, don't forget that." Sometimes her protectiveness was exasperating. Daisy was only twelve years older than me, she shouldn't act or feel so much like a mom.

"Aren't you coming with us?" Ray asked, looking like his heart broke again when I shook my head. "We just found each other, you need to meet the rest of your family!"

"I can't. You don't know what I've been doing these past six years, I need to do this. I have to balance the scales."

"You're just a kid." Devin's eyes welled up, agony slicing up his voice. I hated doing this to him. "You should be worrying about homecoming dresses and your grades and first dates, not war, not this."

"I know." I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to think about it. That world wasn't possible for me anymore. "Believe me, I know. But for better or for worse, that's not who I am. That life can never happen for me, but I can't dwell on that and neither can you. This is my reality and I'm going to make the best of it. I'm sorry. Claire, as I was, is dead. But I'm Freddie and I'm here and maybe we could find a new way to be a family. But right now I have to go."

I rushed from the room almost as quickly as the words had spewed from my mouth. Daisy was right behind me, ordering Fitz to talk to them and meet us in a minute. We rushed to the lockers, slipping into tactical gear and joining the others on the plane.

Coulson was briefing, but the pain hit hard and fast. Darkness swamped my mind, hazing out my eyes and ears. Daisy sounded tinny and far away, and I barely registered her hand rubbing along my spine. Every instinct told me to fight off the pain, but I forced myself to draw it inwards. The shell buzzed around me, becoming part of me for only a moment before it shifted outwards and I was able to shake it off.

"I'm fine." I grabbed Daisy's arm, pulling myself up. Coulson watched me intently, a question in his eyes. "Before you ask, I don't know what changed. It'll come to me when I need it."

Though I looked confident, I wasn't sure this time. Nothing felt different.

"You stay on the plane." Daisy's eyes told me not to resist. I didn't care.

"No. i know you just met my family and maybe you want to protect me for them, but I'm no kid. I've accepted the possibility of dying, and they'll learn to as well. I've been killing people since the day after my ninth birthday, and I haven't stopped yet. I'm a ruthless, cold-blooded killer." Exactly what Grant made me, but for now that was an advantage. They thought he was a psychopath, so maybe knowing I was one too would make them respect me. "I'm _your_ cold-blooded killer, and if you decide to pity or baby me you lose one of your best warriors."

"Okay." Coulson nodded, facing the group again. It wasn't exactly respect, but it was acceptance, and from there I could earn the rest. "We have reason to believe May's in danger from Lash. Lash is Andrew. May's already lost too much, we can't let him hurt her. Because she might."

"Why are we so sure she isn't going to kill him? I mean, it's May," Daisy spoke up. She acted like May was invincible for some reason, even though she was clearly the tougher of the two.

Coulson's eyes seemed far away, abnormally sad in his kind face. "Everyone has a weakness." He motioned with his head to Lincoln and, to my surprise, me. Daisy nodded once, grabbing Lincoln's hand. "The mission is not to take out Lash, but if you get a clear shot you take it. Rosalind Price and the ATCU are here for him. We're here for May."

We settled in an empty parking lot, the others rushing out toward a large building. Coulson stopped me from following, waiting until they were out of earshot to speak. "The ATCU will know you as Agent Brown. I need you to lead them against Lash. you're the most powerful person I've ever seen, and I've gone toe to toe with gods. Hopefully he'll sense you strongest and you can draw him away from May and to Rosalind's soldiers. Daisy doesn't want you to risk yourself, but I think you're tougher than she knows."

I nodded, pulling an assault rifle from the wall and shoving extra magazines onto the hooks on my belt. Just to be cautious, I added a grenade. I followed his instructions quickly to find the ATCU team at the side entrance.

"Agent Brown." A woman Coulson's age stepped forward, surveying me critically. The bald man behind her didn't seem too thrilled either. "I was expecting someone older. Coulson put you under my command, and I'm putting you under Banks's. You step out of line and he has permission to ship you back to Coulson in a box, am I clear?"

"Yes ma'am." I saluted, military style. It still felt unnatural not to give the double fist salute when given an order, and my hands still twitched up whenever people said hello or goodbye or gave me an order. Occasionally, like now, I found myself forcing the words to stop in my throat. She seemed to sense this, her cold gaze making it obvious she didn't trust me.

Banks ordered us to fall in and, on Rosalind's signal, go single file through the door and fan out. He split us into East and West groups, taking me and two other agents with him. Both of them fidgeted nervously, repeatedly wiping their sweaty palms as best they could on their uniforms. They dressed like military, but I guessed they were closer to FBI or CIA, trained to fight alone. One checked his feet with a glance, adjusting his stance. They were probably straight out of whatever academy the government had created for this.

Rosalind signaled and we charged in after Banks.

There wasn't a sound in the warehouse, except an almost imperceptible voice from upstairs. I got Banks's attention and pointed. He nodded, motioning for us to follow him and he crept up the steps toward the room. Coulson and the team beat us there, entering just in time for us to watch them and hear the tearing sound, then the wailing combination of a man's pained outcry and the roar of a monster. Lincoln told us to wait where we were before sweeping in behind the others, but Banks ordered me to go see what was happening. I obeyed, edging forward until I could see the room cleary. May was handcuffed in place, unable to defend herself from the blue beast between she and Coulson.

"I know you're in there Andrew." His gun was up, but Coulson wasn't firing. His focus switched, and I understood. If he angered Lash it could tear through May before we could intervene. "You okay?"

May nodded, so I slipped back and reported it all to Banks.

"We've got orders to stand down as long as Coulson does," He breathed to us. "But the second he shoots I want full firepower on that creature. You got that? Keep your weapon out Agent Brown."

He looked exquisitely annoyed as I strapped my gun across my back, leaving my hands free to remove the lock picking kit from one of my numerous pockets. I put a finger to my lips, showing him what I had and vanishing. Apparently Coulson hadn't warned them I did that, because they all looked like they'd just been dropped in the middle of a war zone without a weapon.

No one heard as I snuck past, all the way around the walls of the room until I reached where May was chained. If she noticed me it could take Lash's focus away from Coulson, so I had to be careful. I slowly pushed the two pieces into the lock, exhaling to keep my hands steady. Lash's head snapped toward me, eyes boring eerily straight into mine as he advanced.

"Hey." Lincoln shot a bolt of electricity straight into Lash. "The Inhumans are over here."

Coulson yelled at Lincoln to fall back, but Lincoln was going for the kill. But even his strongest lightning barely pushed Lash back.

"Not all of them." A huge blue hand smashed across my chest, cracking ribs as he backhanded me into the wall. Blood trickled through my hair and down my back. I cursed myself as I sat crumpled against the wall. Lincoln had pushed him right back into me, and I'd been too busy with the lock to notice. It was a rookie mistake, one I shouldn't have made. Lash bore down on me again, but now I was ready. I pushed myself hard off the wall into a roll, which my broken ribs turned into a diagonal twist. Luckily I still ended up on the adjacent wall, letting me grab my gun and shoot at Lash without anyone in the way.

"Freddie." Lincoln realized, zapping Lash. "Coulson, it's Freddie! She's hurt, get them out of here!" He yelled, antagonizing Lash until they were one after another out into the hall. Shots rang out as they met Banks and the others, but I had other things to worry about.

I crawled over to May, not caring how pathetic I looked since no one could see me. The lock was easy without a giant blue monster attacking, and she was free in seconds.

The noise led me straight to them. Lincoln and Agent Price were still on their feet, the two agents from my group and the entire other group lying dead on the floor. My power was healing, but that wasn't my first instinct. And as badly as I wanted to help them, the others were fighting a losing battle. Daisy was trying to help, but there wasn't much she could do from the floor below. Still limping forward, I sent what pain I could muster to Lash. Even though I was far away, his back bowed and red mingled with the blue of his skin. Huh. The second his ribs broke, mine seemed to mend themselves. A new surge of energy poured through me, but sadly he felt the same. He lifted Price easily over his head and threw her over the railing. Personally, I didn't give a shit whether she died, but Coulson's anguished face was enough to make me want _revenge._

I pictured taking all my pain and scrunching it into a little ball, a dense black mass of fourteen years of hurt, and wound up like a baseball pitcher. I pulled my arm back, but someone stopped me. May held me still, but what really stopped me was the look in her eyes. she looked terribly old and yet terribly young, and so, so vulnerable. The darkness in my hand dissipated as she stepped, her forced calm so strong time seemed to slow.

"Andrew." Her voice wavered, but it wasn't the only sound. One of the agents groaned, reaching for his gun. I fell back from the fight, kneeling beside him in the growing pool of blood.

Tearing away his shirt revealed his gruesome mess of a shoulder, burned and shredded. Most of the upper muscle and even bone had been burned off, cauterizing it. His chest wasn't so lucky. A deep gash pumped blood down his front. He didn't have much more to lose, evident by his already pale blue skin. I pressed both hands to his stomach, watching his bleeding slow as my uniform filled and soaked through. Strength seeped back into his limbs and he shoved me away weakly.

"Don't." His voice was thick, but insistent. "Save them." He motioned where everyone else stood, surrounding a man. May pulled her gun, shooting her ex-husband in the chest. His skin rippled blue, so she shot him again, with enough force to send him reeling back into the containment module. May stood limp, watching as he transformed. Daisy and Price came up the stairs, Daisy going to stand with May and Coulson.

Price looked around, taking in her men sprawled and dead. Now that Lash was locked away, I returned to healing the man's shoulder, finishing as quickly as I could since I could barely hold my own arm on his as I worked.

"Thank you." He accepted my hand and I pulled him to his feet. He grabbed his gun before joining me in staring at Lash. "What is that?"

"An Inhuman gone wrong," I sighed. He nodded thoughtfully.

"You're an Inhuman." It was odd hearing someone outside the team say that, especially because it was the type of thing I'd been trained to keep secret, and the type of thing people usually tried to kill me for. He didn't look accusatory, just sad. "What's your name?"

"Agent Brown."

"No, your real name." He sensed my hesitation, stopping me before we got to the others and lowering his voice. "I won't tell Rosalind, I just want to know who saved me. You told Coulson, and it's definitely safer with me."

I looked where he motioned, cursing my own stupidity. Now that he said it, they were clearly together, or about to be. And I hadn't noticed. Daisy did. I could see it in the way she observed them. "Freddie."

"Zach." We shook hands just as Banks caught sight of him, beckoning. Grudgingly, he moved that way, leaving me with Daisy and Lincoln, who had joined us at some point.

"You healed him?" Lincoln watched Zach, who was gesturing angrily. "You really are the most powerful Inhuman."

"He made me stop to help the fight. I couldn't let him die after that."

Daisy gave me a forced smile, and I got the feeling she was angry with me. She went to join Coulson, leaving me with an impressed Lincoln.

"I saw how you were gonna kill Lash. that ball of dark energy, how'd you do that?" He stepped closer, using me to hide the electricity criss-crossing his fingers. "Can you show me?"

"I don't know if I _can_ teach you," I admitted. "I'm pretty sure it's tied to my emotions. The more intense, the easier I can hurt people. I just will the pain to the surface."

He concentrated on his right hand, forcing the sparks to intensify until his hand was wreathed in a tiny supernova. "Will it to rise to your palm," I encouraged him.

It formed what looked like a glowing stormcloud, shooting bolts up and down to connect with his palm. Grinning like a maniac, he twirled and threw it. With a huge bang it slammed through the wall, leaving a hole seared almost a foot wide.

"Agent Campbell!" Coulson and the others were all lowering their guns. "All four of you head back to base, put Lash in containment."

Price ordered Zach to escort us while Banks dealt with the bodies. Daisy pulled May away from the module, and Lincoln followed her, all three behind Zach and I.

"Why don't you like Rosalind?" If I was leaving Coulson in danger, I should know so I could stay behind and protect him.

He looked behind us, making sure no one could hear. "She forced me to join the ATCU. I'm a marine, not a special agent. I signed up to fight Afghans, not aliens."

"Aliens are the new terrorists." He burst out laughing, which made no sense. It wasn't funny.

"Sorry. Just never thought I'd hear anything like that." Behind us I could hear the others consoling May, which meant now they could hear us. "So you can be invisible, and heal people, and fight with magic? I thought you only got one magic?"

"Usually. And it's not magic, it's…" Huh. it was sort of science, the DNA shift anyway, but it also involved aliens and willing strange things that actually happen, so… "Yeah, I guess it is magic."

"Magic or not, you're the best."

"No, Daisy is so much more powerful than me, that's why she's the leader," I protested.

"Nah." He sauntered a bit ahead of me, smiling. "That's just unfair, you getting to be the prettiest and the strongest. This is your plane, call Rosalind if you need me."

"Why would I-" I stopped talking, since he disappeared back the way he came, nodding at Daisy as he passed her.

May led us on the plane and immediately moved to the cockpit. I sat across from Daisy and Lincoln, who both kept shooting me smiles like they'd just found out an embarrassing secret.

"What?" After a few minutes I couldn't take the glances anymore. Daisy laughed. "That guy."

So she heard him compliment me. "Zach? What about him?" I asked defensively.

"He was flirting with you." That didn't sound right, but those were the presumed intentions of his words. But there was no reason, I had already saved his life. There was no more I could possibly give him, nothing he could want from me. Daisy laughed once, but stopped when she saw my puzzlement. I don't know why, but she seemed sad when she whispered to Lincoln. He put a comforting arm around her, tucking his face into her hair. I averted my eyes, awkwardly folding my hands together for something to do instead of intruding on their private moment.

I could feel Daisy glancing at me as she and Lincoln mumbled and kissed. He kept his arm around her the whole ride home, driving me into the cockpit with May.

"You mind? I don't wanna talk." She nodded once, letting me sit beside her. We sat in silence until the plane started its descent and I worked up the courage to speak. When I was at my lowest she helped me, and it was time to return the favor. Without something to do I was afraid she would just stare at Lash until she broke. "Training room?"

May nodded silently again, finishing the landing and leaving without another word. It was refreshing not to have to voice my every emotion, like with Daisy or Fitz. i know they were trying to help me, but I'd always preferred to hit instead of talk about my problems. A good sweat and hard work could clear up any problem.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

Once I'd put my gear in the wash and cleaned most of the blood off myself, I jogged to the sparring gym. May was already there, taking out her anger on a punching bag. Each hit was more desperate than the last, and it was clear to see how tightly wound she was holding herself just to stay in one piece. I couldn't watch it anymore, so I slipped inside and slammed the door behind me.

May was a fierce opponent, but we were pretty equal. She definitely wasn't used to having the height advantage, no matter how slight. We fought until we were both bruised and tired, though neither of us would admit that, and sat down for a water. The first time she pinned me twice in a row we'd started talking, just tips for the other.

"Need ice?" I asked as she gingerly felt her shoulder. I'd almost snapped it before I remembered it was just practice. She nodded and I passed over an ice pack. "Do you know if someone took Devin and Ray home?"

"Fitz. He should be back soon. I'm sorry you had to leave them because of me." May looked at her water bottle, strangely guilty.

"You didn't know. It was Coulson who asked me along, not you. And I chose to go. It's not like it was going well anyway. They saw me brutally murder people and use magic. I'm not exactly what they expected." My hand stung, and I realized I'd been biting my nails. "Are you close with your parents? How do you make them not fear you, and even though you can, and have done, such violent things?"

"They know I would never hurt them, and everyone I've killed was so someone better could live." I was becoming more and more convinced that she was the perfect agent for Coulson's SHIELD. Melinda May embodied protection in a way I was almost jealous of. I just knew how to kill those who people like her told me to. She was a leader, and a real shield. "I know it hasn't been like that for you, but they don't know that. You have a second chance with them, to be the family they deserve. Don't waste it."

But how? They deserve someone innocent and loving and young. All they get is me, too old, paranoid, and messed up. But that wasn't May's problem. "Thank you. And if you need anything, I'm here."

Instead of answering, she rolled back onto the mat. That was as needy as she could be, and I understood. She was asking me to stay with her. Smiling, I joined her.

I knocked on Lincoln's door, shushing a grinning Fitz behind me. Everyone else was in bed, but it's hard to sneak when you're with a nerd who's never misbehaved in his life.

Lincoln looked confused when I held a finger to my lips and shoved him back into his own room, Fitz shutting the door behind us. "Can you use your power to make popcorn?" I asked, holding out the packet. This did not help clear up the confusion.

"Something wrong with the microwave?" He asked irritably, but his smile took the sting from his words.

"The microwave burns it," Fitz answered, apparently disgusted by the concept of burnt popcorn. I'd been fine with it, but he was so adamant I suggested Lincoln. "Freddie's never seen Star Wars."

"Coulson threaten to kick you off the team?" He laughed, taking it from me. "How'd you get the movies? Coulson assign you to show her?"

"Freddie stole them from his office." Fitz and I both giggled at his shock, unnaturally giddy. Hanging out with Fitz was like being on drugs, intoxicating me so I didn't have to think.

The door swung open again and Daisy slipped inside, stopping short. Lincoln filled her in, handing us our popcorn. Fitz flashed me a smile and headed back into the hall, but Daisy stopped me from following. "Are you watching movies or are you _watching movies_?" She made air quotes, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Watching movies? Is there another meaning?"

"Wait, you're not having sex?" Lincoln asked. My cheeks burned and I shook my head aggressively.

"No, no we're not friends like that," I defended us. Did everyone think that? "We're seriously just watching movies."

"Make sure you get enough sleep, okay?" Once I agreed she let me go. Fitz's grin lit up the hallway, his laughter infectious as he led the way back to his room.

Fitz woke me up by throwing stale popcorn at my face. "C'mon monkey. We have to put everything back." 'We' clearly meant he wanted me to, since he was still tucked snuggly into bed. I groaned, exceedingly comfortable in my blanket nest at the foot of his bed. He got up slowly and went into the bathroom, leaving me to re-lace my boots and slip quietly into the hall. Simmons looked really confused when she saw me, and upset when Fitz emerged behind me, looking irregularly disheveled. Without a word she turned on her heel and marched the other way.

Oh. I suddenly understood why she hated me recently. She loved Fitz, and I'd been taking up all his time, and she saw me in his room. "Why does everyone assume we're having sex? Do we need to put out a notice or something?" Shock and disbelief ran across his face, followed by realization. He moved more quickly than I'd ever seen him, hustling down the hall after her. I already knew he loved her, but it still blew my mind every time I saw just how intensely.

"Jemma wait! Come on Jemma, let me explain!" He grabbed her arm, spinning her to face us. She angrily swiped at the tears racing down her face.

"I know Fitz! I know I have no right to be upset, after all you did for me while I was with Will, and now that you're trying to save him for me. I know I should be happy for you that you found someone you love. I'm sorry I'm not as wonderful as you are, because it's really hurting me and I don't know why!"

"What, you think it's easy for me to save your boyfriend? It's killing me Jemma, and _I know why_! But all I want is for you to be happy, and if that's not with me then so be it." I felt like an intruder as they stared at each other. "And I'm not in love with Freddie. I love her, yeah, but not like that. She's like my little sister."

"My birthday is next week." I stepped up beside Fitz, taking a deep breath. He needed my help, but that didn't make telling my secrets hurt any less. "I'll be fifteen."

Simmons covered her face, wiping off her cheeks and laughing. "Well I feel like an idiot. I'm sorry. Is there any way you could forgive me?" We both assured her we already had as the rest of the base woke up around us.

Coulson found me in the gym, lifting alone while the others puttered around on various duties. "You really shouldn't do this without a spotter. Or without Mack. Are you sure you're not physically enhanced?"

Resting the bar back in its hooks, I sat up to face him. "Other than experimental steroids, I'm not."

"Experimental steroids?" He leaned in, frown deepening.

I sipped my water slowly, giving myself time to think. I was starting to think it was probably abnormal, even for spy agencies, to be trained the way I was. Every time I revealed a little more. People cringed and stared at me in horror. Coulson was my boss, so he shouldn't be horrified, or worse, pity me. But he probably deserved the truth, in case it made me of more use. "Yeah. Before I was worth anything as an agent they used me to test out serums."

Oh. It made sense now, how they'd brainwashed me without my knowing. They must have done it while I spent so much time semiconscious in the lab. Most kids in the Shadow program had been raised in Hydra, so at nine I was far behind. A few saw the advantage of a kid completely devastated, but most of the authorities thought I was a liability, a weak link in the Hydra chain. And if you can't replace a weak link, you repair it in any way possible. For me that meant ceaseless training and any drug they could dream up to build the perfect weapon out of a child.

"Like Captain America." He sounded amazed, but I just shrugged. Personally, I thought it really sucked. "Anyway, I didn't come down to talk about this. I'm sorry I pulled you away from your family."

"It's really okay. They're basically strangers at this point. Maybe one day we'll find our way, but right now they're not family. Family is whoever you would die for, and that's the team." Coulson was getting easier to open up to, I realized with surprise. I couldn't help it, Hydra had ingrained in me that need to share everything with my boss, which now applied to Coulson.

"I'm glad to hear that, really." He looked away, signalling me he was about to say something I wouldn't like. "But if I had a daughter your age-"

"Don't. I'm the same person I was before they showed up. You took me seriously as an enemy, why can't you take me seriously as an ally?" I demanded, fed up with the age judgement. "I've seen kids as young as four kill people. I'm the most deadly person on the base. Even more so than you."

He sighed, countering in his sad, tired voice. "Killing isn't what makes you an adult."

"What are you asking sir? Whether I've been in a relationship, had sex?"

"The Hell's going on in here?" Lincoln chimed in, leaning in the doorway and looking amused.

Daisy stepped up behind him. "Yeah, Coulson, what the hell?"

Coulson glanced between the three of us. "I feel very ganged up on. Agents, I'll be out in a moment." Taking the cue, they left and shut the door behind them. "Look, I'm not worried about you, and I'm not sparing their feelings. I'm worried that if you stay here May will ask you to heal Andrew, and then we're left with no Freddie, a psychologist, and a very powerful enemy, and we can't afford you taking that risk."

"Then I just won't do it when she asks."

"May has ways to make you. You're a soldier, Agent. I know you struggle not to take any direct order given to you. It's part of what makes you such a good agent. You don't want to go with your family, that's fine, you're late for your agent assessment anyway. Pack a bag, we'll leave for the Cocoon in an hour."

He left, letting Daisy and Lincoln in again.

"Coulson said you're going for your agent assessment. Take video for us," Lincoln laughed. I asked why, and a wicked smile spread across his face. "Because they're never gonna know what hit them. You'll finish in about a day. Just try not to kill anyone."

After two days of sitting in the bunk room and researching on my tablet, the rest of my class arrived. I was being tested alongside soon-to-be graduates of the new SHIELD operations academy, a bunch of muscular twenty and thirty somethings who looked surprised to see one bunk already taken. An outspoken woman named Piper took the bunk above me, quickly making introductions for me to the guys claiming the closest beds around us. Ours was the back left corner, so we could see the twelve others as they filed in. i gave everyone the story Coulson had assigned me; I was an ex-marine recruited on mission by his team, who everyone of course wanted to know about.

They woke everyone else at six so we could go for a run, pleasant in the crisp mountain air. Our instructor was a burly man in his early forties who never stopped yelling, which was an abrupt change from Coulson and May.

"Formation!" We all fell into position, weapons pointing every which way. This was my least favorite part, since I had to trust others to watch my back. I knelt in the front, unable to swivel more than a few inches. "Scan!" We all simultaneously looked down our sights, checking the area. Now we had to be utterly silent, which, after a five mile sprint, was no easy task for most. Agent Popowski, the instructor, made the hand gestures for stand, spread, and move out, and we all began running again, all the way back to the Cocoon.

Weapons training was insanely easy, just target practice to determine our proficiency. Piper and I scored the highest, spurring a round of jokes about changing the sleeping arrangements. We partnered up for sparring after lunch, but the tournament style organization didn't leave me with her for long. Though bleeding in multiple places and already bruising, he fought her way into the top five before being knocked out. I advanced into the top two. The class gathered around once they all had been bandaged and had come to, giving me plenty of time to heal. The guy smiled, half friendly and half threatening. He was over six feet tall, so with only tennis shoes on I didn't even come up to his shoulder. He introduced himself as Calver, and we squared up. I went low, sweeping his feet out, but he rolled up and barely missed my face with a kick. Ducking my roundhouse, he spun behind me and easily lifted me off the floor. I swung my legs up and back down as high as I could, touching the ground and flipping both of us so her back took the impact. Bones snapped, and I rolled off his still body as fast as I could. Calver did not stand back up. Not even Agent Popowski spoke.

The stupor broke, Popowski dropping to his knees beside him and shouting for a medic. Calver's fingers and toes curled from the pain. Popowski couldn't help. I shoved him aside, hating the fear on his face as he tried to pull me away from her.

She woke slowly, sitting up as I fell down. Pain sliced my back. I put her through this. Before I fell unconscious, I drew in the hurt of everyone in the room.

Piper was the only one in the room, laying on the bunk above me. When I woke, she told me to wait where I was while she told Agent Popowski, and left me alone in the silence. I pulled my tablet from under the pillow and called Fitz. He would know how I should fix this.

"Hey Monkey," he answered, voice far too thick. The camera showed barely more than his face, but enough that I could see he was in the lab, wearing the same shirt as when I left, all rumpled and untucked. "I'm just working on finding Simmons' space boyfriend. You having more fun than me, hopefully?"

"Not really. But are you okay? I'll come back soon, I think I'm pretty much done here," I promised hastily. "Even when he comes to Earth, I think you and she will work out eventually. You're obviously completely in love with each other."

"Evidently I'm the only one in love. And you can't come home yet. Rosalind Price requested the results of your agent assessment. She's concerned that you're too powerful to be controlled. Which is true." He took a bite of a sandwich, making a face. "No pesto aioli. But how's it going there? Why're you all alone?"

"I broke someone's spine while we were boxing, then healed her. She's fine now, but I think they fear me. I want to come home," I confessed, feeling like a little kid calling home from a bad summer camp.

"I miss you too monkey. We all do. No one has made me laugh in two days. You realize how depressing that is?" I smiled at him, promising to call again soon as Popowski entered the other end of the room.

I flipped off the bed, standing at attention despite the stabbing in my back.

"Sit. You broke your spine an hour ago, I'll let you sit." We sat on opposite beds, watching each other warily. He looked afraid, but he was hiding it well. "What are you? Not human. One of them freaks?"

"I'm Inhuman. We're just regular people, but a little more powerful," I explained as patiently as I could, pushing aside the knot in my chest. Instinct was telling me not to trust him, but this was a member of Coulson's SHIELD, so it was probably wrong. And Coulson wouldn't let him fail me or send me away because of this.

"Whatever you are, you're no agent. Aliens don't deserve to live on our planet with us. You can't be trusted to defend the people when you're not one of us." His words punched into my chest more painfully than bullets, because he was right. How could someone like me be trusted to protect a world I'd never done anything but destroy? I'd killed far more people than I'd saved. With a blink I could wipe out a room full of people, and it wouldn't be the first time. Why should someone like that be trusted to live in and defend a society they'd barely even seen? "You stay on base, my word is your law. I say it, you do it. Got that, freak? Good."


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

Popowski filed me as having run away. I'm sure the team was still looking for me, but they'd never check a SHIELD compound. The basement of the Cocoon was a lab where new drugs were created, except an abandoned, walled off portion no one had used in years. Popowski was a Watchdog, which he said was a human organization for the extinction of Inhumans. His ally Blake had a bad run in with the team, so they weren't taking chances. By testing me, he explained, they could learn how to destroy the others. So each day there were new tests, on my blood, on my brain, on physical ability, if I could withstand starvation. Drugs kept my brain a little fuzzy around the edges, but I was determined not to help them hurt Daisy, despite the chains on my ankles to keep me frozen in the room, and the days blurring together.

They were testing how long I could go with critically limited oxygen when I realized I was going to die here. I always thought I'd be killed in a fight, that I'd die fighting to take down the bad guys and protect the good ones. I never thought I'd die handcuffed to a cold floor, flopping about, slipping around in my own blood, gasping like a fish out of water. But I knew I was going to die when I began shaking uncontrollably and vomiting. It felt like the room was shrinking around me, my lungs being compressed. The alarm barely registered, since my head was already ringing.

The pressure let up, and I uncurled as much as I could. Since my hands and feet were chained down, I had limited movement. I was tucked into the tightest ball possible, which was just twisted inward. A feminine figure stood in the doorway, another mirage from the drug. The hallucination drew closer, kneeling in front of me. It looked like Daisy.

"Freddie! Freddie! god dammit Freddie come on, I can't lose you! Please Freddie please wake up," Daisy cried, tugging at my restraints. I'd had this dream before. I closed my eyes, hoping a blackout would bring me less painful imaginings. I always saw them when the drugs became too much, rescuing me and carrying me home to safety, being a family again until the doctors snapped my back to the lab in the basement.

The hallucination didn't end, but it got groggier. Daisy picked me up and carried me away, crying more than she had in other hallucinations. I tried to push the doctors away, but one fitted a mask over my face. My vision cleared and it looked like Simmons was the doctor, but the image flickered, a plane with Daisy and Simmons, then the lab with faceless masks. Whatever they gave me kicked in quickly and knocked me out hard, finally freeing my mind.

For some reason the floor felt extra comfortable today. My head felt clearer than it had since they'd experimented with the drug levels. I couldn't feel the chain around my ankle, but there were needles in my arms and a pressure on the side of my leg. The hallucination was still going on, I discovered. It looked like I was on a hospital bed at home, with Fitz sleeping in his chair, head pillowed on my thigh. The realism was both incredible and terrifying.

Lincoln checked my vitals, but with him I could see the image flicker back into a masked doctor. But he sounded like Lincoln and looked like Lincoln and even _smelled_ like Lincoln. It felt so normal I almost believed it was real, until he tried to increase my pain meds and knock me out.

"No! No don't put me back under!" I screamed. They'd never listened before, I knew, but I had to try. "Stop, please!"

"Freddie, relax. I'm just trying to help!" Lincoln said, still holding the morphine drip.

A sob forced its way out of my chest, my weary brain struggling to hold any control. Nothing was real, nothing was fake. "You're a Watchdog, you don't want to help! You're not Lincoln! You're not even real Lincoln!"

I thrashed against the bed, knowing I was tied down somehow but unable to feel the restraints. Fitz woke from my kicking, leaping up and standing with Lincoln.

"What's going on Freddie? Talk to me, it's okay." He knelt beside my bed, unafraid. "You're safe now monkey, you're home. We're not gonna let them take you again, okay? But you have to let us help you."

"Don't wake me up," I pleaded with the doctors. When the drugs hit I'd have to go back to reality, and I wasn't ready for that. Fitz stroked my hair, despite how disgusting it was, as I sobbed. It was too much, being comforted about my dream by my dream. "When I wake up you'll disappear. I'm not really here. No. No, you're not really here."

Fitz looked horribly concerned when Lincoln pulled him away.

"God, what they do to her?" Fitz asked, taking deep breaths where he must have thought I couldn't hear them.

Lincoln leaned on the wall, glancing back my way. "I don't know. I think we need Daisy and Coulson. And get Simmons, if you think she's up to it."

Fitz left despite my crying out, and Lincoln ignored my screaming, but stayed warily on the side of the room.

"Freddie, you have to calm down. I'm real, and I'll prove it to you." He moved cautiously forward, like someone who was trying not to spook a wild animal. Reaching out carefully, he took my hand and helped me stand. Surprisingly, my feet moved easily off the bed. He let go quickly, motioning for me to walk around. In the lab, there were nine steps in any direction from the center. So eighteen steps and that's not where I was. My feet felt like lead, each footstep dragging and struggling. One… two… three..

Seventeen… eighteen… nineteen. Nineteen.

I took off down the hall, barely feeling the chill despite my bare feet and arms. Fitz and his sleepy procession yelled for me to stop, but I blew by, pausing only to grab Coulson's ID tag. I disappeared, slowing so my feet and breathing were silent. The only sound was their shouting, which I could barely hear over my own heart.

The vents were easily big enough for me to crawl through, and I already knew my way to the main hangar door. I knew in reality I was crawling and running through a Watchdog base somewhere and my eyes couldn't be trusted. So I closed my eyes and let instinct take over. When I opened them again I was outside, looking back through some trees at some huge building, which was probably a school or warehouse or factory at some point. I was in reality again, I think, so maybe I'd really escaped their compound.

A street sign told me I was pretty close to home, but I couldn't go there and face everyone like this. Besides, there was nothing they could do for me, no matter how much I wanted to see them, other than locking me up to make sure I didn't hurt anyone. But they weren't my only option. So I boarded a bus headed for New York City.

The tower was beautiful, shining one way glass, and heavily guarded. Everyone in the city knew it, but no one dared approach except the nerds in costume camped out. Even now, in the hottest part of the day, they clustered around and screamed. What would they think if they could see me, barefoot and bloody, breaking into the home of their heroes?

Pushing aside the thought, I scanned the glass doors for a way in, but they required a security pass. I still had "Coulson's", but that wasn't even real. Time to go old school. I stomped down on some frayed pavement, picking up the largest chunk that came away and scrawling on it with a stolen marker 'I love you'. Then I hurled it through their window.

Alarms blared for only a moment before they found the rock and called it a false alarm. I left them pondering why one of the "fangirls" had done that and wandered the halls until I found the room I wanted. She was writing in a journal at her desk, with her computer open to a translating program.

"Be silent," I commanded. She leapt up, red light circling her hands. "Wanda, right? I'm not going to hurt you. I came for your help."

There were no cameras, so I shrugged off my invisibility.

"Who are you?" she asked, circling my waist with magic. "What do you want from me?"

I probably looked like a crazy person, dirty, bloody, barefoot, in ragged clothes, with wild hair. The magic around me tightened. "I don't want to hurt you, so please don't try to hurt me. I think you're the only one who can help me, and I don't have much, but I'm willing to give you just about anything to make it happen."

She released me, sitting down on one edge of her bed and motioning for me to join her. "Why do you need my help? Who are you running from?"

"People who want to experiment on me because I have powers. I escaped the lab, but they gave me some kind of drug. I keep having hallucinations, and I can't tell what's real and what isn't. For all I know, this conversation is all in my head. But I hope it isn't and I have to try. I need you to erase the false realities."

She nodded, pressing her hands to my head without further ado. "They did it to me too. Hold still." I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth against my head and resisting the urge to run away. "There. The gas is gone. Your mind is your own."

There was no pressure in my head anymore, and my sight was clear. Wanda smiled as I stood up and stretched. "I'm Freddie. Thank you. For payment, what do you need?"

"Nothing. I know what it's like." More than she knew, we were alike. But to her I was just a strange rogue powered person come begging for help. "The bathroom's in there, if you want to shower. I'll get us something to eat." She turned slowly, and I realized I'd grabbed her arm. The mirror told me I looked like a feral child, but I couldn't help it. No one could know about me, or I could never go home. "I won't tell anyone. Watch out for Vision, he liked to come in through the wall."

With that she left. Her bathroom was incredibly cushy with a spiral walk in shower I hurried into. Stripping, I hung my clothes over the towel bar and quickly scrubbed off all the nastiness. When I turned off the water, a knock sounded on the door.

"Freddie, do you want me to clean your clothes?" I told her no and she walked away. Once I was dressed I stepped out and joined her on the bed. A pizza sat between us. "It's easy to get pizza fast when the whole world knows your face."

"Thank you." She was silent as I ate. I knew she wanted an explanation, but I let myself eat first. "It wasn't Hydra, but they had me originally. I was held by the Watchdogs. They want to eradicate powered people. Probably you included."

"Did Hydra give you to the Watchdogs?" Wanda asked. It must hurt her to talk about Hydra, because she was picking away at her blanket.

"No. I worked for Hydra for almost six years, but I reformed right before I got my powers, a few months ago. A Watchdog saw me healing someone, so they tested on me to see what it takes to kill a powered person." My voice shook despite my best efforts. If any Inhumans died, now it was my fault. They'll die because I wasn't strong enough to resist a few humans. "I need to go home. My family will be in danger since I ran away."

"Do you need money for a bus ticket?" I shook my head, turning invisible again. "Follow me closely."

The tower was incredible. Luxurious furniture and expensive looking art pieces decorated the residential floor. Each room had the mark of old money, an ancient jewel here, a coat of arms there, and everything carelessly thrown around the way only people who've always been rich seem to manage. Clint Barton lounged on the couch playing video games, teaching Steve Rogers behind him how. But they weren't who I was watching out for.

There, sitting at the table eating a sandwich, smiling at the boys arguing, sat my supposed worst enemy. Black Widow. Of course, just my luck, Wanda walked right up to her. "I'm going out, would you tell Tony?"

"Sure. Where're you going?" My mind instantly fuzzed with hate. How dare she talk to Wanda as if she was in charge? She needed to be taken down a peg.

Not my thoughts. It was probably Hydra, but I couldn't help it. I wanted her dead.

I snapped my fingers and her arm. Shook my head and put a bullet hole through her side. Then one in her shoulder. One in the leg. And in the foot. "Freddie!" Wanda screamed, lashing out with her magic. I dodged most of it, but a little split off and lashed my cheek and throat. Her magic felt like fire, making my skin sizzle and bubble.

Anger crashed over me with the pain, but anger at myself. I pulled all the wounds back, packing them into a ball and hurrying past everyone to the stairs. My vision went in and out; the power necessary to hold it all together was almost too much. Outside, I just ran. I ran right into the ghetto, busting open doors until I found what I needed. A mother and son clung to the back wall, the woman falling down as the man drew a knife on them. My magic swirled around him, breaking him into a heap on the floor. With a salute to the child, I started running again.

It took me a week to get home, running with the occasional help of a bus. The door opened with a little light hacking, but the hall wasn't empty. Daisy sat against the wall, leaping up when I came in. she surveyed me warily, and I wondered if I'd broken this. Maybe we couldn't be family after I'd run away. But then she burst forward, hugging me as if she could fix me if she just held tight enough. "I'm real," she whispered. "I'm real Freddie."

"I know," I cried into her shoulder, holding tight. Fitz came up behind her, patting my hair. They let me stay right there until I could pull myself together and lead them back into the base. Daisy stopped me when we got to the inner door, taking Coulson's badge from me and pressing a new one into my hand. Coulson's badge. The Watchdog badge. Maybe. The new one had a picture of me from when Fitz and I were using the weapons. I looked pretty good, and very intimidating. The name on it was Freddie Leopold Johnson.

"Technically Jamie Frederick is dead, and Freddie Brown ran away from her agent assessment, so we had to create you a new identity. We figured you still wanted Freddie and I wanted to give you my last name but Daisy pointed out it's what everyone calls me so there would be two Agent Fitzs. And Freddie Fitz sounds awkward."

"There are technically two Agent Johnsons now, but you don't have to use it if you don't want to." I nodded, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. Here I was, thinking she didn't love me anymore, and she was making me an official part of her family.

Both of them seemed sadder than before, but that could just be because I'd just turned up dirty and crying on their doorstep. But that didn't seem like a good enough reason. Not for these two to stay this quiet. Like they were grieving. Daisy went for Coulson, and Fitz led me into the lab. I refused to sit on the hospital bed, so he let me sit in his swivel chair. I asked him what was wrong, but he picked at a hole in his pants for a solid two minutes before responding.

I went to the other planet to save Jemma's boyfriend. Turns out he died to save her and an ancient Inhuman took over his body, so I had to shoot him. With a flare gun." He ducked his head, breathing laboriously and clutching his knees. "And then we lost Bobbi and Hunter. They're not dead, but none of us can speak to them ever again.

"I'm so sorry." We held hands across the bed, silent until Daisy returned with the whole team in tow. She sat on the bed, taking my other hand while I told them what happened. Coulson was the easiest to look at, since he kept calm and collected no matter what I said. Plus I would never break down in front of my boss. Fitz's fingers trembled in mine, sadness and anger painted clearly on his face. Daisy just looked violent, but I could feel her hand shaking and clenching. Her free hand was knotted into a fist. I hated making them feel this way, but I needed their help if I was gonna take down the Watchdogs.

"May? Ready the plane." Coulson kept his feelings in check, but it wasn't hard to see the hate burning behind his eyes. "We're going for Popowski. Freddie and Fitz stay here. Make sure she's okay."

"No. I can't let you fight my battles for me," I protested, letting go of their hands.

"Hola? Quien es este?" A Hispanic woman stood in the doorway, probably Columbian by her accent.

"Me llamo Freddie," I answered. Everyone but Coulson looked at me in surprise, but I grew up in an area with mostly Hispanic and Italian neighbors. "Y tu? Cual es tu nombre? Porque estas en la base? Eres un agente de SHIELD?"

"No. No soy un agente. Soy un Inhuman. Y tu? Pareces demasiado joven." She looked between Coulson and I, accusing him with her eyes, pegging me automatically as a child soldier. I probably looked even younger than I was with the oversized sweatshirt from Wanda. "Eres una nina soldado?"

"Child soldier?" Coulson asked incredulously. "That seems a little harsh."

"No soy una nina. Soy un Inhumano y un agente de SHIELD. Cual es tu nombre?"

"Elena Rodriguez."

"Freddie Leopold Johnson." She looked at Daisy, and back at me, clearly wondering how we were related since we looked nothing alike. "Es un… well, it's a long story. Any other new additions I should know about?"

"Joey Gutierrez. A few other new Inhumans, but these two are the most powerful." Daisy looked fondly between the Inhumans, me, Elena, and Lincoln. So this was the team, plus a new guy. These were the Secret Warriors. It seemed so long ago Daisy was asking me to join as I snuck off base, especially since nothing had happened with it since. But now we were organizing, building up a team more powerful than this world had ever seen. Except the fact that Lincoln was a doctor and Daisy was a hacker and I knew nothing about the new people. We needed to train as a unit.

Coulson agreed wholeheartedly, leaving the Inhumans on base and calling in Joey, who turned out to be very kind. Elena was a fighter, but with no formal training. Joey worked construction. Daisy had us all share our powers and what we did before, which ended with me as the instructor. The only one with combat training was Daisy, and it'd only been about two years but that was enough to make her confident in beating me. We circled in the ring, the other three watching from a safe distance. She danced in, aiming straight for the head and trying to trip me at the same time. I easily dodged and spun behind her, sweeping out her feet. She caught herself in a backwards roll, launching at me again. Overconfident, she went to fake right. I saw right through that, giving her a solid jab in the nose and smashing the side of her head with an elbow, letting her catch my next blow and put me in a headlock so I could flip forward and landing her solidly on her back, twisting so I had her pinned.

"Where did Daisy go wrong?" I asked, staring at the others studiously avoiding my eyes. "Joey. What was her first mistake?"

"Saying yes when you challenged her?" SHame bubbled up in the face of his fear, but I pushed it down. Fear was healthy, and they'd need it to survive.

"No." I stood, pulling Daisy to her feet. "She went into the fight believing she would win. From now on you are the underdog. Overconfidence gets you killed. Daisy, you've been training Lincoln, right? So you work with Joey and I'll take Elena and Lincoln."

"Shouldn't I take Elena so they can learn the basics?" she asked me while the others split obediently.

"Hablas espanol?" Daisy got closer and whispered, asking if I was alright to take on two of them after what I'd been through. That's when it occurred to me that my people at SHIELD really didn't know what I'd been through before. The torture had been terrible, but I'd been through terrible things before. And I'd gotten over them. So I could get over this. "The five of us are a team, right. We all have to work together, and all need to know and trust one another. So we switch up the groups."

Elena understood a few words of English, but Lincoln was hopeless with Spanish. The constant flipping back and forth wasn't too bad, although I did accidentally switch to Gaelic for a second during instruction. They squared up, Elena like a boxer and Lincoln like Daisy had taught him. On my command, they attacked. Elena barely twitched forward, but Lincoln fell flat on his butt. And then again.

"She's fast," Daisy called from across the gym. "And she snaps back into place like a Yo-Yo."

This time they fought without powers, and Lincoln barely managed a pin. Elena was stubborn as an ox, small but muscular and tough. Even pinned she kept struggling, slamming his nose with her forehead and freeing an arm to continue brutalizing him with. Both were bleeding when they stood, but neither one was stupid enough to complain. They wiped off as best they could and squared up again. This time I corrected Elena's guard, up so she could block her face. We practiced punches so I could correct both their form until they were flawless. Until I went one on one, at which point both fell apart in seconds. Elena focused too hard since she had barely any muscle memory, and Lincoln had the SHIELD style, too much flare, and couldn't fight someone who moved another way.

"Lincoln, come on. You're not dancing, you're fighting. Looking good doesn't matter, winning does. On your feet soldier."

"I'm a doctor." He huffed angrily, stalking off to stand with Daisy. But Elena stayed, and even asked to spar again. This time I let her use her powers, and she knocked me on my face exactly the way I'd shown her, so I couldn't get back up in the time it took her to bounce back and then pin me using normal speed.

Elena was easy to trust, and for some reason trusted me, so working together flowed naturally. While we practiced attacking and defending by combining powers, and I tried to get her up to speed on words she might need in battle. Quick as her feet were, her mind moved faster, and within the hour she'd mastered everything vital. Joey joined us then, and we folded him in easily. Soon enough he worked fluidly with us, and helped me learn to switch languages more cleanly. Wanting to contribute, Elena regaled us with stories of her childhood in Columbia, telling us about growing up with her cousin and the antics they'd gotten up to. Daisy and Lincoln went to shower, probably together, leaving us to blare the Puerto Rican music Joey hated but his mom loved. We were so busy singing at him obnoxiously we didn't notice Daisy watching until she flickered the lights. They fell into formation instantly, standing behind me slightly shifted sideways, positioned just how I taught them. Joey had his guard up on the arm closer to me, other hand outstretched with an open palm. Elena had her fists up but low, so she could twitch them up to fight or down to run as the need arose. I grinned, incredibly proud of the progress they'd made, but Daisy just looked on sternly. Sensing her nerves, I sent Joey and Elena off to the showers and followed her to the locker room.

"SHIELD intercepted a 911 call. Someone asked for me by name." She seemed stiff and abnormally short with me, but I shrugged it off.

"Trap?"

"Maybe, but I'm going anyway. I need you there in case things go South, but don't suit up all the way. We're pretending to be ATCU agents." As if to prove her point, she grabbed her jacket, gun, and a fake badge, leaving everything else in her locker. I did the same, except with a few fake knives added. My plain black sweatshirt was incredibly loose on me now, and I realized I probably looked like a weak little scarecrow. My arms and legs were even tired from teaching the others. I shook them out, getting more details from Daisy as I tugged on leggings which now hung low, falling off my hips, and bagging around my thighs and calves. Daisy caught my arm, softly pulling me back around. She looked terrified that her fingers touched around my arm. "Eat something. A banana, at least."

I nodded, but followed her straight out to the plane after a minute. When I was captive my food came from a tube, the only solid foods used as bait or for a test, so I found myself without any desire to eat. May and Coulson had a heated debate in the cockpit when I stepped on, which Coulson apparently won. May lifted us silently into the sky, and I joined her once I'd been briefed.

"I know I'm a loose canon right now, and I know you've noticed. I'll be staying here as backup. Coulson said that's because of you." She nodded silently. "I just wanted to say thank you. I don't think I should go back into the field yet. I think I want to just work in the lab or something for awhile, maybe train new recruits. I don't know, it sounds stupid now that I say it out loud."

"No. If you need time, take it. If I hadn't taken a desk job after Bahrain I would have broken down. I would've stopped functioning, and I definitely wouldn't be on Coulson's team. Your mental health is just as important as the physical, so treat it that way." The plane dipped and she righted it quickly, managing to keep her eyes on me the whole time. "You could go live with your family. They miss you. I'm sure your siblings want to meet you."

"I can't." My pulse skyrocketed, anxiety pounding through my veins and making my breathing labored. I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to stop the little face from popping screaming into my mind. "I killed a little kid. She was five. They made me, I couldn't help it, there was nothing I could do, and I _know_ it wasn't my fault. But I can't have a little sister after that. I mean, what if she looked up to me? She'd be looking up to a murderer. How can I pick her up, with the blood that's on my hands?"

"I thought that too. Andrew and I were trying for a baby, but after Bahrain I couldn't. I divorced him, so I didn't have to see what could have been. I thought I didn't deserve love, but I was wrong, and so are you. We were both forced by circumstance. You're right, it's not your fault. I'll never stop punishing myself for not finding another way to stop her, but you had no choice. Be better than me. Forgive yourself." She turned back to the controls, working her jaw like it was sore from overuse.

Leaving me on the stick, she sat silently beside Coulson. To my surprise, he looked at me for reassurance, and all I had to do was nod. And he trusted me, with May's mind and all of their lives. Just like that.

May ordered me to stay in the plane, but Coulson overruled her and loaded me into the car beside Daisy, who dug behind us in the trunk and plopped a new jacket in my lap, and then pants. I'd worn fatigues before, but the ATCU badge was new. I changed quickly, making everyone uncomfortable for some reason, and got into character as an ATCU agent.

"What?" The laughter in Daisy's eyes was really throwing off my character.

"This is just the oldest I've ever seen you look," she giggled. "And you're in a children's halloween costume."

That screwed my tough character, but I was staying in the car anyway. My job was to keep my eye out for the inevitable trap. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I launched out of the car only a second before May turned and screamed. Hydra. They opened fire just as I did, managing to take out both guns before I ran out of ammo. I tossed the gun aside, using my powers instead. My vision started going dark, but I kept going until I blacked out all the way.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

"Why am I always seeing you in here?" Simmons chastised as I sat in the hospital bed. I'd refused the IV, and even the smell of food made me feel sick, so Simmons had me on lockdown in the little med lab. My last visit here still burned in my mind, but Simmons kept up a steady stream of conversation so I couldn't think about it.

"Because Coulson keeps ordering me in here. And Daisy. And May," I muttered. "They think I'm suicidal. I heard them talking."

"You clearly have a death wish. After weeks of torture you threw yourself right back into the field, and got hurt, and you're still itching to get back in the fight."

"I'm not itching to get back in the fight." The protein drink in her hand made me queasy. "It's Daisy. When she was talking to Coulson she seemed… Sad. And old, like she'd seen too much for one lifetime to go unscarred. I know I can help her, but not from in here. You've got to let me help her."

She held out the drink again. "Drink one of these every three hours and it's a deal."

I'd done far worse, but at this my stomach rebelled. I sat up and heaved, though nothing came up. Trying not to look at it, I grabbed the bottle and chugged.

The yelling led me to the others, and a middle aged agent named Doug filled me in while May and Daisy discussed. Apparently an Inhuman had given Daisy a vision of someone's death, and since Coulson shot her in the vision he was making May go instead, who hadn't been in any of it. I tried to step in and help, but Fitz practically glued me to the floor off to the side with a granola bar I promptly shoved aside. But that just strengthened his resolve, so he yelled "Nope!" if I shifted even a little toward the fight. Which was upsetting, because they were making stupid mistakes.

"Daisy? Daisy! Is there a reason it has to be in that order?" I shouted until she heard me.

Daisy rubbed a hand through her hair, exasperated. "That's how it went, or will go, you know what I mean."

"A vision is a glimpse of the fourth dimension," Fitz interjected. "It's technically unchangeable."

"But sending May instead is changing it. So if we can make that change, why not more?" I rolled forward and stood up beside them. Waving off Fitz's protests, Daisy asked what I meant. "Well, you only saw what would happen if you fought back the way _you_ do. If this way is too slow, show May how they'll come at her and let her figure out a better way through them."

May nodded slowly. "But I trained her. She fights the way I would. You're the only one here who had non-SHIELD training. Any suggestions?"

"You know exactly who is where when. Kick the door down and shoot them all." They all seemed startled, except Daisy. "You know they're going to try to kill you. So kill them first. Get back into position, I'll show you."

I grabbed two of the toy guns and left the room so they could prepare. In my mind I could see the whole layout, where I would walk and the angle necessary for each gun. Turning on my heel, I kicked open the door and strode in, yelling bang each time I fake shot, crossing them all off in less than three seconds.

Passing the guns to May, I helped Fitz to his feet. May looked at me like I made her a little sad. "You don't move like Ward."

"He wasn't my only teacher. I did martial arts long before I met him." I smiled at the memory. "Used to drive him crazy, but by the time he was really working to change it I was in the Shadow Program and he had no say."

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Fitz interrupted Daisy's question.

"It's okay." And it really was. Maybe I was starting to get over it, because, though it hurt, I wasn't having a panic attack.

"He trained me too. Before May did." Daisy seemed to be forcing the words out.

I smiled at her sadly. "I know. He told me all about you. I hated you, actually. Thought you were gonna replace, but you were something very different to him than I was. I was a sister, you were a crush. I didn't realize it was _you_ until a while after I got here." May read Daisy's expression quicker than I did, touching my arm to discourage me from saying anything else. Muttering something about having to go, Daisy rushed out of the room, leaving the rest of us in awkward silence.

"You go after her. You're better at talking then I am," May suggested, wistfully watching her go. "Ward hurt us all, but Daisy felt it the worst. Except maybe you."

"Grant never hurt me." I hurried after Daisy before May could answer, but I felt the concern radiating toward my back.

Weirdly enough, I could find Daisy by her sorrow. I could sense exactly where she was in the base. I knew I could sense people's physical pain, but emotional pain, that was something new. Wait. The last time I went through terrigenesis nothing changed. Maybe, instead of getting a new power, mine just modified. I closed my eyes, mentally sweeping the base, following Daisy into the hangar and onto the Bus, finding her in her old bunk.

"I know. I cared about him too, and now he's forced us to fight him. He screwed up both our lives." She nodded, a little surprised puff of laughter telling me I was on the right track, though comforting people didn't come naturally to me anymore. "But he made us who we are, turned us both into soldiers and got us here, now, with these people who care about us probably more than he ever did."

I sat down next to her, knowing she was struggling with something else, waiting for her to tell me. "Coulson killed him. He crushed his chest." The room felt cold. Daisy had wanted him dead, but now she felt ashamed of her dark thoughts.

"It was right to want him dead. He deserved it. You're feeling guilty, I know, but those dark feelings aren't something you need to be ashamed of, unless you feel them about innocent people. Grant wasn't innocent."

"I'm not guilty, I'm angry."

"Not entirely."

"How would you know?"

"I feel it too." All her sadness was replaced with curiosity. "Like how I can tell you're in pain. But I went through terrigenesis again and that power modified, and I can somehow understand your emotions."

"What does it feel like?" She scooted closer to me. "Can you see them or feel them?"

I thought about it for a moment, trying to figure out a way to explain that it was a 6th sense. "It's like tasting colors."

"When did you go through the mist again?" she asked, standing and offering me a hand. We walked back to the main base, and I told her it happened before the SHIELD assessment. I'd been too focused during that to realize it, then, in the lab, I'd been suppressing my powers so they couldn't figure out how to combat them. And then I was just too weak. Until Simmons force-fed me. I kept that part to myself though. No need to worry her more than I already had.

The perimeter alarm blared, and my new power flared up. I could sense everyone in the base, but most were unknown. I recognized the team, Fitz and Daisy the easiest. Whoever the unknown agents were holding was sad, and when May approached he flushed with happiness and anguish. So my best guess would be Lash.

It was Lash.

Simmons stood behind the glass of the lab, watching him. She felt the way a sunflower looked, but swirled with fear. Fear was bitter, like a grapefruit. May's feelings were much more dim than the others, from years of tucking them away, while Coulson felt like honesty and righteousness, but with an unexpected dark side. I was starting to enjoy it, the way each person felt special and different. And I could send someone when they were sad, and make them better. This was a power whose range I could test, so I shut my eyes and expanded my mind.

I didn't pass out, but I was definitely on the floor. There'd just been so much input all at once, and it was too much for my already exhausted mind to handle. May, Daisy, and Coulson stopped their argument and ran over, but I waved off their concerns. I was tired, but exhilarated. Finally I had a power where I could help everyone. Maybe even myself. It was selfish and I'd never admit it to anyone, but my healing really felt more like a curse.

"Drink it." Simmons was there, standing over me with a bottle. Less grudgingly this time, I quickly swallowed it down and accepted her hand up. Coulson watched me suspiciously, nodding to himself and ordering Daisy and I into his office.

They debated for a moment before I understood the problem- Daisy wanted to go on a suicide mission. And then I understood why he'd brought me too. "I'll go," I piped up, standing from my perch on the arm of the chair.

"No," they yelled in unison, returning to their arguing.

Now I was confused. "Why not? That's why you brought me in here, isn't it? To offer my services?"

"What? No. I brought you in here to find out why you collapsed again," he answered, almost as confused as me. "Why would I send someone who's barely on her feet back in the field?"

"Because you need me and there's no other choice."

"I could send Bob-" He looked at his hands, taking a four count to compose himself. "I won't send you back out there until I'm absolutely certain you're back to normal. You went through torture, Freddie. Let yourself recover. Daisy, you can go. Just be careful."

Suddenly his face went completely slack. Daisy had already left, but I turned as he rewound the footage.

The team looked as shocked as I did when they saw Grant. The sheer volume of emotion in the room was starting to give me a headache, but I kept my mouth shut while they discussed what to do. May's plan of "kill him harder this time" seemed pretty popular. Coulson had explained to me what was going on before the team arrived, but I was still trying to make sense of how he got back from Maveth. Grant had always been good at surviving, but this was some next level shit. I'm pretty sure I looked as sick as I felt, because Simmons forced a ginger ale into my hand. Pretending to drink it didn't make me feel any better, but it made her happy and that was worth it.

"I'm going, and I think Freddie should run backup and coms," Coulson said, to a chorus of indignant shouts.

"Are you crazy?"

"She's barely alive, Phil."

"You can't make her see him again!"

"Medically speaking, she shouldn't even be standing."

Tears rose into my eyes and I looked down to compose myself. It didn't matter where I looked though, because I could feel their protectiveness no matter what. After all that had happened, they still just wanted to keep me safe, even though that was a dangerous job. But I couldn't let them see how happy that made me or they'd keep trying, so I swallowed down the lump in my throat and leapt off the desk.

"I'll go. I'm not some frail thing who has to be locked up for her own protection. I know the most about Grant. You'll have a better chance with me there." May stared at me the way people watch a car crash- knowing something terrible is happening, unable to prevent it, but also unable to look away. She knew I wanted out of the field, but I couldn't stop. I don't know why, but I couldn't help it. "He loves me. Maybe I can get through to him."

"There is no getting through to him. That's not him. It's an alien in his body." Coulson and May had a silent conversation before he turned back to me. "She's right. You're too close to him."

True. I remembered all too well what happened the last time I could've killed him. I couldn't.

Fitz stormed out of the room, muttering excuses. Slipping into invisibility, I trailed him silently all the way down to the concrete basement where we learned how to use my weapons. He slid down the wall, head in his hands, a stress toy twisting between his fingers. He radiated disappointment. At me, I think.

"What did I do?"

"Nothing, Freddie." He tangled and untangled his toy obsessively. "Just give me a minute alone, okay? I just want to be alone."

"No you don't. You want me to… something." I could feel his wish, but not what exactly it was. I think it had something to do with me, but that was an educated guess. "Do something? Say something? Be different, somehow?"

"I just wish you didn't care about him so much. You're like my sister, but I obviously don't matter that much to you," he cried out, "Do you know what he did to me? He put Simmons and I in a metal box and dropped us to the bottom of the ocean! I was damaged for months! Do you know what he did to Daisy? He made her become an Inhuman, forced her to meet her father, who was insane. He broke her heart, and she hasn't been the same since. He made Coulson lose faith in the team, in heroes. Not to mention what he did to you."

"I'm sorry Fitz, I can't help it!" I explained desperately. "He saved my life. I owe him. But I don't love him the way I love you. You're my family now, not him."

He leapt about three inches into the air when I patted his shoulder. Oops. shrugging off my invisibility, I sat beside him.

"Why haven't you used your weapons since the last time we were down here?"

"I did. I blew up the airsoft park."

"Daisy cataloged that you got a new power?" he asked softly. "You know what people are feeling? Like their auras?"

"Not exactly, but pretty much. I feel what you feel, and, I don't know how to explain it, but I know, um." I struggled to figure out how to word it. Feeling something and saying it were very different skills. "Who you are, at your core. Whether you're a good person. You all are. Although you're too worrisome for your own good."

"Can you feel yourself?" He sounded insanely hopeful.

"No, why?"

Disappointment rose in him again. "No reason."

"I'm just a mess Fitz." We stood at the same time as a bug scurried out in front of us. Fear flared up in Fitz, and my body responded before my mind. The bullet hit it straight in the middle hard enough not a trace of it was left to scare him.

Coulson met us halfway down the hallway. "We heard a shot."

"Spider," I explained, seemingly unhelpfully. They looked at each other like they were trying hard not to laugh, and humor brightened their auras. "What?"

"You shot a spider. Most people just, you know, squish them," Coulson giggled.

"Oh."

Fitz ran off to tell Simmons the story, leaving me alone with a chuckling boss. He led me back toward the others slowly, and I knew he wanted to talk. I moved at his pace, waiting until eventually he spoke.

"You don't have to go on missions anymore, if you don't want to. May told me you were thinking of getting out of the field."

"I don't know what I want anymore, sir." It was probably the most honest answer I'd given since I got here, and he seemed to recognize that. "In theory, yeah. I don't think I want to fight anymore. My whole life has been danger and death and war. I barely remember anything else. But I feel like maybe I'd like to learn. The other agents have all this life experience, happy memories to look back on when things go bad. I always thought I didn't need that crutch, like it was making me stronger to live without it, but it's just made me feel old and sad instead. Like maybe for me happiness is impossible. But you guys have made me realize that it actually isn't. Because this team makes me happy. So I can't leave the field."

"Why not? Freddie, we want you to be happy. If that means not going on missions, okay. You can work in the lab, or train new recruits." He paused to pull up a file on his tablet. "What I really think you're talking about isn't leaving the field, it's leaving SHIELD. If that's what you want, well, read the file. Bring my tablet back whenever you're ready."

It was a picture taken from google maps first. A big house surrounded by woods and nature. There was a swing set in the backyard, a soccer goal beside it, a basketball hoop in the driveway. Next was a school, a list of courses it offered, and reviews, which all gave it the highest marks possible. Then a quaint little town. And my father and brother and stepmother and stepsister and half brother and future sister in law. So happy. I swiped angrily at the tears on my face. Coulson was giving me an out, a sign that he trusted me to make the right decision. But to me it had another message altogether. All my happy memories were here for a reason. That wasn't the kind of life I could ever be content having. Not when my family was here, in danger. These people in the photo looked happy. But they weren't family. And even if they were, how could I disrupt their quiet suburban lives with the danger that followed wherever I went? Even if I might not want this life, it was my life to learn how to live. It wasn't their responsibility. I wasn't their responsibility. No matter what DNA we shared. This family chose me, and chose the hard life.

I had a plane to catch.

Coulson nodded silently when I handed back his tablet, letting me stand in the center and change into gear. He covered his eyes like a gentleman, but I didn't see why. Fellow operatives should get used to each other in every way. Fitz and Simmons joined us, looking painfully awkward, and Lincoln, who Coulson forced to look away. Anger colored his aura, which was embarrassing, until I realized I was down to my bra. The scars coating my side from the window when Grant saved me shone dark and ugly still, crisscrossing my arm, leg, stomach, and back. When I was finished they looked up, mostly embarrassed, for some reason. Fitz seemed angry at Lincoln, but I figured it was none of my business.

"I couldn't take the out, Coulson. Thank you, but this is where I belong. Fighting beside the people I love. Protecting my family." He nodded again, and I turned to Fitz. "What's wrong?"

"I know Hydra had different rules. Socially, I mean. So don't take offense, because I love you and I'm just trying to help you. But you can't change in front of people unless you're in a locker room."

"Why?"

"People could stare at you, and we don't want anyone to hurt you. Or force you to hurt them." He patted my leg softly, but I was still confused. They were all my family, so why would it be a problem?

"Oh, you mean 'cause the pilot? It's okay that he was watching me a little, I mean there's nothing I can do about it, he probably outranks me. Fitz?" Fitz had launched himself out of his seat, into the cockpit. Yelling and banging noises ensued and the plane dipped a little. I followed him quickly, still extremely lost. Why was he so mad at the pilot?

"You can fly right? You're in charge of the plane." He stormed by, dragging the pilot by the collar of his shirt. The plane shook a little, and I ran to the controls. At least this made sense, even if Fitz had lost his mind. Coulson was giving Fitz a stern talking to behind me, which I could barely catch snippets of.

"You don't need to protect her from everyone Fitz, and it clearly didn't bother her."

"I'm sorry sir, I was just so angry. She said it made her uncomfortable, but she thought there was nothing she could do about it because he outranked her."

White hot rage filled the plane, dizzying in its intensity.

"What did they do to her to teach her that? I can't stop thinking, what did they did to her once she believed that?"

"Stop," I wheezed involuntarily. Memories crashed in, Grant protecting me, what happened when Grant went on missions with SHIELD, when he couldn't even call, when he would never find out…

My eyes snapped open, and I focused on flying. All the emotions behind me amplified, surrounding me as I shoved down my own. I wrapped myself in their happiness, their contentment to be together, and their love, for SHIELD and for each other and for me. Their love for me wiped away the pain until I could breathe again.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

My panic was over by the time I landed us, with a terrified pilots assistance. He was then given strict instructions to stay with the plane. So was I. They piled off, Fitz and Simmons staying within earshot in case I needed them, which I of course informed them went both ways.

"Hey," I called to the pilot, who was now in the farthest seat possible. "Hey, pilot."

He turned toward me a little, nervously. "I'm not allowed to talk to you."

"It's fine. I'm sorry." I moved closer to him, which made him keep a tight eye on the door. "I won't let them fire you, if that's what you're worried about."

"Yeah, I am worried. I'm sorry I looked at you, but you were changing in the middle of the plane. Plus, I didn't know your boyfriend, who is creepily overprotective by the way, was gonna try to kill me for thinking you were hot." He stared at his hands, which luckily meant he couldn't see the blush I quickly concealed.

"He's my brother, actually."

"Oh. Well your brother needs to realize you're an adult who can make her own decisions. And what, he lets you come on life threatening missions, but I'm too dangerous because I looked at you when you were stripping right next to me? That's fuckin' stupid." He didn't seem afraid anymore, just indignant. "You're a SHIELD agent, you can take care of yourself, right?"

"I know I can, but it makes him feel better to think he's protecting me. With a job like this, it's rare for him to feel like he can, you know?" That was pretty much true, with Fitz wanting to protect me and feeling unable, but to this guy it probably just sounded like we were two regular siblings who both joined SHIELD. "What's your name? And how did you know I was an agent?"

"Aaron, you?" I told him, and we shook hands. Aaron relaxed back into the seat. "How did I know, really? Have you seen a mirror? You sit like you're about to jump up and fight, you're constantly looking around, and you look pretty confident you could kill me if this conversation goes somewhere you don't want it to. Plus, you're on a SHIELD mission."

"True. and I could kill you, but why would I? I'm really not great at flying, you're piloting us home."

"Yeah, I'm a regular Poe Dameron."

"Who?" I asked, to his apparent surprise. He pretended to clutch his chest. His laughter cut off suddenly as he glanced over my head, mock surprise turning to real fear. Smoke billowed from the building, twisting my insides to lead. "Stay with the plane, be ready to take off at a moment's notice. Half an hour, then call for backup."

I leapt out of the plane once he nodded, face still slack with fear.

I forgot we parked on a rooftop. The skyscraper gave me a perfect view of my best route, a clear line of rooftops. My shaking body protested vehemently, and I couldn't help but hear Grant in my head. He'd made times like this not so scary, and I could hear him telling me to breathe, stretch, and trust him. But he wasn't here. I couldn't do it. The roof access of the hotel burst open easily with its rusty hinges and I launched myself down the service stairs. I had to stop in the street to throw up and turn invisible before I ran the rest of the way to the building. Once there I scanned for the team. Daisy was on the roof, and she was in pain. Fitz yelled at me as I streamed by, but followed when I told him to. Leaving he and Simmons, who I noticed were holding hands, in the dust, I raced up. But the plane was high in the air, and Daisy was the ground, and for a terrifying moment I couldn't feel her. My knees smashed on the ground beside her, and she grasped my hand weakly.

"Freddie," she croaked. Her eyes flared open. "Don't, Freddie, don't heal it, don't, Freddie no. I'll be fine. Freddie stop!"

Daisy's voice strengthened as I pulled the wounds from her skin onto mine. God, she was strong to want to keep pain like this for herself just to spare me. She was so pure, but so sad. I kept a hand on her as I moved over to the man beside her. My vision went dark and my ears popped, a sound like a train horn practically splitting my head wide open. I tried to scream, but I couldn't feel my body. And then I felt Daisy's arms around me, pulling me away and almost into her lap. My cuts were already closing, like my powers were making up for weeks of nonuse. But my head couldn't stop spinning.

"Stop taking pain that's meant for me,' she cried into my shoulder.

"Can't help it." My words slurred together a little, and I realized my mouth was full of blood. So was Daisy's, and the sight of us shocked Fitz and Simmons. Coulson herded the four of us onto the plane once I'd called Aaron, and fought with Fitz over that awhile. I felt fine, so I took a seat next to Daisy with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a roll of paper towels. Both of us started wiping off our identical streaks of dried blood.

"What's wrong?" I asked, reading the anguish in her aura as she looked around at our family.

"Nothing." I knew she was she smiled at me, but she wasn't going to tell me, not yet. I got the feeling, the normal kind, that she just wasn't ready. "Coulson's gonna take you off field duty. You have to stop throwing yourself into every fight, or Coulson won't let you in any fight. You act like you're invincible, and you might be, but it kills the rest of us to watch you try to find out."

"I'm sorry." She nodded and leaned back, closing her eyes to shut me out.

"Don't read my feelings right now, okay?"

So I was completely not allowed to help, if it was up to her. Luckily, it wasn't. Coulson watched her with almost as much concern as I did. Lincoln just looked at her lovingly and me sternly, cleaning out his own cuts. He wouldn't accept my powered help, so I rolled him the hydrogen peroxide. Like it or not, he was getting my help.

We touched down more softly than when I was piloting. I moved up to the cockpit before we left. "Who's Poe Dameron?"

He laughed a little. "He's from a movie. Maybe I could show you sometime, after a nice dinner? What's your phone number?"

"I don't have a phone," I responded, bewildered by how disappointed he felt. And nervous. Maybe this was the closest to a normal life I was allowed to have, friends and family both, but all within SHIELD. "But if you give me your number I can borrow Daisy's."

Daisy waited for me outside the plane, and we walked together back into the base.

"What did the pilot wanna talk about?" she asked.

"A movie he referenced earlier, I wanted to know what it was called so I could watch it."

"What was it?"

"I don't know. He said he'd rather show me." She wiggled her eyebrows at me. "I don't think he has many friends, because he got really excited when I said okay. He seemed nice enough though, didn't he?"

Daisy stopped. "What exactly did he say?"

"He said "maybe I could show you sometime, after a nice dinner."" Daisy burst out laughing, to my confusion. "Do I look that starved?"

"Oh my god Freddie. He was asking you out. On a date. Fitz might actually kill him." She snorted. "Or you might kill you since you said yes."

"Shit! I agreed to go out with him?!" My mind raced. "How do I get out of it?"

"Well that depends. Do you want to get out of it?"

I could tell she was teasing me, but I had no idea how to respond. "I don't know?! I mean yeah he was really cute-"

"Yeah."

"And I mean I've never been on a real date before, and I'm gonna live here forever so I may as well start making friends other than the family. But what if he just wants to date me to get in with you guys and advance in the ranks? And I mean I've been on a mission date but I don't think I'd want to treat a real date like that, manipulating and all. I can be whoever they want me to be, but I don't know if I could be myself. Plus if I dated him, and we know I'm kinda a mess, I'd eventually fuck it up and he'd still be living on base with us, or what if it goes well and then he has to worry about me and I have a boyfriend with a life threatening job to worry about and-"

"Freddie." Daisy stopped my rapid stream of words, probably for the best. I was freaking both of us out, and was not helping myself make a decision. In this, I definitely needed Daisy's help. "Stop panicking. First thing, you can't even legally date him if he's over eighteen, which he definitely is. Well, you can't have sex with him. Hey? So I see you weren't really planning on it anyway. Just by that reaction, I'd say you're not ready for this. Maybe start with someone who's also fourteen? And also wow, you have never seemed more fourteen."

"I'm fifteen now," I answered, blushing.

She looked shocked. "We missed your birthday? I completely forgot, I'm so sorry."

"It's fine, it's not like I was here for it. And it's not really something I celebrate. Every year Grant took me out to dinner to celebrate him finding me. Same day."

She patted my shoulder, telling me we should both shower and meet back in the living room after, and she suggested not telling Fitz anything. I wasn't planning on it anyway, but it would be kinda nice to have him flat out tell me I couldn't.

Mack was playing video games when I entered, so I joined in and told him what I'd told Daisy. He took it much more seriously than her and tried to help me figure out what to do. Daisy joined in as our player three, but they quickly got into an argument as to whether or not it was okay to ghost him, which was Mack's plan of action. Daisy thought I had to at least call him, maybe even give him a chance. Coulson thought we were all being stupid teenagers and he had no opinion on Aaron. He did call me into his office when the round ended, pulling me sadly from our intense Mariokart tournament.

"Sir, you wanted to see me?" I slid inside to where he and May were discussing something very seriously.

"You're off field duty. I thought I should tell you in person." He offered me a chair, and May gave me water. "You're one of my best agents now, but you're also part of the family and we can't watch you die. And you're gonna die if you keep this up. You've got a death wish, and until we can help you realize you're better off alive I have to keep you out of danger."

"I can take care of myself. And you can't punish me for hurting myself to save people, when every agent here would do the same thing if they had my powers."

"If. If they had your powers. And it's not a punishment. I get it, you're trying to atone, and with what you've been through, well, memories can be destructive." He looked at May, who understood without words that it was time for her to go. "I've been there. Two years ago I was put in a machine which forced all my repressed memories to the surface. I begged them to let me die, but they wouldn't. I can't imagine what it must be like to live like that all the time. But I do know it gets better. If I'd died then I never would have rebuilt SHIELD, Inhumans would still be under the leadership of a psychopath, FitzSimmons would have become professors and never would have invented half of what they have, you'd still be under Hydra's control. And I never would have met Daisy, who is in every way possible my daughter. Life gets better, you just have to be around to see it."

It wasn't exactly the same thing. Everything he said reminded me of those anti-suicide posts Grant had made me look at when I first joined Hydra. I'd never been allowed to think that future was anything but Hydra, but here Coulson was, telling me life got better. He meant however I wanted, doing whatever I wanted to do. But I didn't need it to get better, I wanted this life to last forever, and have been my life forever. "Yeah, my life has gotten immeasurably better too. But I don't deserve it. Coulson, I probably deserve to be locked away from everyone I care about, scared out of my mind and cut open in a lab somewhere no one can hear me scream, the way I was. Because I did that to others. To a kid. But believe it or not, that's not why I'm okay with dying. I'm okay with dying when it means someone better will live. If Daisy had died, you'd all be torn apart. Would you even stay with SHIELD? Could you lead them without her behind you, backing up your good decisions and challenging your bad ones, blissfully unaware you're grooming her to be the next director? Could you live knowing our next leader wouldn't be her?"

"You're right," he said quietly. "I don't know if I could. I value her life so much more than my own, more than any mission. I guess it's hypocritical to punish you for being the same way."

Even after all this time, it felt extremely odd to be permitted to argue with my boss. And it was even weirder to have them commend me for personal loyalty. Attachments here were not only allowed, but encouraged. Which was part of what made them weak, but also what made them strong.

"Don't worry sir. I don't plan on dying until everyone I care about is safe." I stood, going to the door. "I should get back to Mack and Daisy. Anything else sir?"

"No Freddie. That's all. Just try to be as safe as possible. I don't know what would happen to Daisy and Fitz if you… you can go."

"Thank you sir."

War games gave all of us flashbacks, so we decided to stick with the Wii. Daisy and I were in a very tense Wii tournament, having already knocked out Simmons, Fitz, and Mack on the balance beam. Simmons had actually been the one to knock out May, on the hula hoop portion. The tennis competition was really heating up, and Coulson came in to figure out why everyone was screaming.

The team pelted us with snacks to try to mess us up. Lincoln launched pieces of pretzel and pillows and blankets from the couches at Daisy's back, electrically charging them so her hair stood on end. Simmons had made a deal with him for me, even though she was throwing marshmallows at me.

"What's going on in here?" Coulson asked. We all stopped, ready to be yelled at. "You didn't invite me?"

He grabbed a handful of pretzels, plopping down next to May. i turned my attention back to the screen, smashing the ball.

"You two realize tennis is not a fight, right?" Simmons teased. Daisy and I were missing about 80% of the time since neither of us had ever played and we swung the remote like bats, but neither of us cared. "You don't have to kill it!"

"Yes, I do," I answered, smashing it into Daisy's side for the win. May had called playing winner, but I stepped down so she could play Daisy and took her seat beside Coulson. Simmons clicked a button and the vacuum popped off its charger and began cleaning up the fallen snacks. I grabbed bag of chocolate covered pretzels before they got sucked up and handed them up to Lincoln.

"I don't want to upset you after your big victory, but your dad's been calling," Coulson whispered into my ear.

"If it was Daisy, what would you want? Would you want her to call if she left you and came back years later, and she wasn't even remotely the same person anymore? If she was damaged in ways you could never fix?"

"Yes," he answered immediately. "No matter what, I'd want her in my life. I'd still love her."

The last seven calls were under Ortholo. Out in the hall, far enough I could barely hear the team's laughter, I took a steadying breath and tapped the name. He picked up on the second ring.

"Coulson, I haven't heard from you, is everything alright?"

"It's me." I cleared my throat awkwardly. "Hi Ray. How is everyone?"

"We're fine Claire, how are you? Coulson stopped calling after you left for your testing, and we were worried." Ray sounded panicked, but painfully fatherly.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, forcing myself not to turn back into a little girl and sob the way his voice told me to. "Sort of got kidnapped, but I'm back home now."

"Everyone's dying to see you. Your stepmother wants to meet you." He paused, and I could hear a little kid jabbering away in the background. "You're not coming home, are you?"

"I am home."

Someone yelled at him to get off his phone, and I could imagine him patiently holding up a finger, blowing his new wife a kiss. "The kids are hungry, I have to go make dinner. Can I talk to you again sometime soon?"

"I'll call when I can. Say hi to Devin for me." We said our goodbyes, and I hung up.

Coulson and Daisy were the only ones left in the room.

"Can I borrow a Quinjet?" I startled them, standing awkwardly in front of them, holding Coulson's phone. "I want to go to Ray's for dinner."

"I think that's a great idea. Take Five, it's gassed up." Coulson smiled, taking back his phone and leaving us alone.

Daisy ordered me into the shower and did my laundry, waiting on my bed with the basket. "You own nothing with any color."

"Of course not, you just got the bloodstains out for me," I joked, rummaging through. "I don't think I need to dress nicely. I mean I have no idea what to expect, what if someone knows I'm there and we get attacked? But then what if it's formal? I'm just gonna wear my gear."

"You can't wear that everywhere. We need to get you a leather jacket." Daisy laughed, leaning back against the headboard of my bed.

"Why not? I wore gear everywhere but undercover for six years."

"Let's compromise. You wear the gear pants and shoes, but you borrow a decent top from me. Deal?"

Her room was a messier version of me, with papers and chargers and cloths flung all over the place. I was dressed except for my shirt, braiding my hair back.

"That's how you do your hair for missions. Can I?" I nodded, and she sat down behind me, plugging in a curling iron and brushing out my hair, careful not to pull. I'd forgotten how nice it felt to have someone play with your hair, and by the time she was done I was nearly asleep, leaning trustingly back against her. She loaned me a nice red top, which, she pointed out, would also not stain if I got in a fight, and her leather jacket. The last thing was makeup, and I applied deep black rings of eyeliner. Hydra had never let me choose how to do my makeup, but I felt like this looked the way I felt, and I wanted to be myself tonight.

Daisy walked me to the jet, wishing me luck and loaning me her phone so I could call home if I needed them. Before I knew it I was landing the cloaked jet in their ample yard and knocking on the door. No one answered, so I slipped around back and went inside through an unlocked window. Ray stood alone in the kitchen, humming happily along to the classic rock he'd always loved so much.

"Hi." He leapt over an inch, glancing around. I was so nervous I'd slipped into invisibility. "Oh, sorry."

"Claire?!"

"It's Freddie, actually. Mind if I stay for dinner?" I asked tentatively. He just smiled and pulled out another plate.

The front door slammed, and little feet pattered down the stairs. "Hey Gracie," Devin laughed. I heard her jump into his arms, and he came in carrying her, talking to two women, the older of whom had in her arms a small boy.

"I'm Freddie," I said awkwardly in the silence. "Devin?"

Devin immediately stepped in, introducing me to Carla, Ray's wife, and Angela, who he was engaged to.

"If you're my sister, why are you white?" the little girl asked, hands on her hips.

"That's Grace," Ray explained unnecessarily. "Grace, her mama was white, and she looks like her."

Grace surveyed me. "You're sitting next to me. I've had just brothers for too long, and I don't wanna talk about trucks anymore."

"Good, because I know nothing about trucks." She deemed this a worthy comment, grabbing my hand and leading me into the dining room, complementing my jacket and shoes. The others followed quickly, carrying trays of food.

"You look like a superhero," Grace told me. "Who do you think is the best superhero? I say Black Widow but Devin thinks Captain America but he's wrong."

My first thought was Daisy, but no one knew she existed. "Scarlet Witch is pretty nice, I've heard Steve is kinda pretentious, but my boss _loves_ him. I don't really know Natasha, other than the one time I sort of accidentally tried to kill her…" I trailed off, noticing everyone was gaping at me.

Grace turned indignantly to Devin. "You never told me she knew superheroes. And why'd you say her name's Claire?"

"I used to be Claire. freddie 's a nickname my friends gave me, and I go by that now. It's a long story."

Everyone passed around the platters, loading up their plates, except for me. "You don't eat? So that's why you're so pretty." Grace looked at my stomach wistfully. That was absolutely 180% not okay.

"I was just trying to be polite," I lied. Devin told me to help myself, and I stacked my plate twice as high as Grace's. "Gotta eat to keep up our strength," I told her.

We ate in tense silence until I broke it by asking Devin what kind of police work he did. "I monitor the web for cyber bullying. It's pretty boring, nothing compared to your work, but you know why it's important."

"He's a peaceful cop." Angela grabbed his hand under the table, fondness pulsing through her. "Tell us about your life, Freddie."

"We should probably not. Grace is an impressionable kid, and there are just some things a parent shouldn't know." I shoved a spoonful of mashed potatoes in my mouth.

Grace did not accept that answer. "Are you a gun cop?"

"Kind of, I guess. I don't really need one though, lately." How to distract them? I wiggled my eyebrows at her, turning invisible.

"How come you never told me she was a superhero?" Grace asked Devin angrily, little hands fisted on her hips.

The deal was whoever made dinner didn't have to clean up, so all of us but Grace, Ray, and Devin, who was out getting dessert. The three of us women stood in the kitchen. They said I didn't have to help, but I thought that was dumb and stepped in to dry the dishes Angela washed, then hand them to Carla to put away.

"So Devin's a cop now. Never would have guessed that. I always thought he'd be a teacher," I told Angela. She smiled, asking me why. "He's so patient, and so good at explaining things. Back then we went to a pretty bad school, but Devin taught himself everything, and then me."

"They're so happy you're back." Carla took the pan I set down, careful not to touch me. The women had immediately accepted that I didn't like to be touched, which I appreciated more than they knew. "Thanks for what you told Grace. Even four year olds have body issues now."

"Yeah, it's no problem. I've been starved before, and no child should go through that. Especially not knowing they're doing it to themselves."

"Amen to that," Carla responded, patting Angela on her way to the cabinet. "Life hits kids too young. They don't get to be kids anymore."

"I'm sure Ray sees a lot of that, being a therapist. You know, that's part of the reason I didn't want to come here. Grace and Justin are too young to be exposed to my life." Both of them nodded seriously. "You know, Ray and Devin made good choices. They're lucky men to end up with you two."

"Yeah, go ahead and remind them of that as often as you want," Carla laughed. Justin started wailing in his bouncy seat in the corner, and she struggled with the stack of dishes in her hands.

"I got him." I moved to his seat, lifting him awkwardly into my arms. I locked eyes with him, probing his sadness. He just wanted to be picked up, so I held him close as he cooed and tugged on my curls.

"How did you do that?" Carla asked, amazed. "He's never quiet."

"It's a powers thing. I sense people's emotions, and their pain, and I can heal physical pain."

"Damn! Anything else we should know about?" She was only half joking, and I could feel the sharp edge of her fear.

"There's a cloaked Quinjet in your yard."

"Carla, why don't you in with Ray and we'll finish in here," Angela suggested. Carla plucked Justin tenderly from my arms and left the room bumping him on her hip. "You look like you need a minute without them."

"Maybe. It's hard to remember that I can't stay." I took the finished dishes and starting putting them away.

"Then stay."

"This life isn't mine, and it's not me. I'd be leaving all the time, coming back half dead, always worrying about my family, and eventually I won't come back. The more you care, the more that's gonna hurt."

She dried her hands, leaning on the counter across from the island I'd pulled myself up onto. "It's completely up to you how often you come back, if you ever come back, but you're always welcome in Devin and my apartment. You're different from their stories, but, to be honest, I like the woman here tonight so much more than the little girl they've told me about."


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

Simmons and Daisy were waiting when I got home, sprawled on the couches watching Mean Girls. Coming home was like sobering up after being really drunk, but without the headache. I wasn't certain what exactly had happened the last few hours. I'd shown Devin and Grace the jet, and then taught Grace how to do a flip on the trampoline. She wanted to learn how to fight, but I denied her that and left soon after. The way Ray looked at me was too painful, so I'd spent most of my time with the others.

Simmons found me an hour or two later, lying sick on the bathroom floor. She pulled my hair back and sat down on the edge of the tub to pat my back. I'd stopped vomiting food a while ago, and now it was just stomach acid and blood. Too weak to stand, I leaned back on her legs.

"Freddie, we have to go to the lab now. Can you stand?" I nodded and pulled myself up on the sink, hobbling shakily after her down the quiet halls to the quarantine room. "A sterile environment should prevent you from getting sick on top of whatever this is. Sit down."

I wretched again, and she dropped a trash can in front of me. I curled up in a ball as she scurried about. When she finished running tests, Simmons covered me with a blanket and started cleaning my hair.

She shook me awake at about five, sitting me up gently. "I figured it out. When the Watchdogs had you, they implanted a partially biological machine in you stomach, which I believe controls its activities as a failsafe in case you escaped. If I don't remove it you will fall into a coma soon. For removal I'll have to put you under sedation."

I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded, but I couldn't let her do it. I grabbed the needle and jammed it into my arm.

Simmons ordered me to bedrest and I reluctantly agreed. Apparently I was still a coma risk. Everyone stopped by at some point. Daisy brought me normal clothes and showed me how to get into the base's Netflix, Simmons monitored my vitals and downloaded a board game app on my tablet, May brought me puzzles, Coulson brought snacks, Mack let me play with RC Lola, and Fitz came every day to hang out and play with everything.

Simmons bustled into the room, sunshine happy. "You're cleared."

I looked up from my conversation with Mack and Fitz over how to make RC Lola fly. Last we tried it flew straight up and smashed into the ceiling, so we were working out the bugs. My idea was to have the metal inner wheels be basically fans when they flipped parallel to the ground, but the guys wanted to add a center fan for extra lift and stability.

"You're free to go." Simmons smiled, winking at Fitz and Mack. "You should go to the living room, Daisy wants to see you."

Now that she'd force fed me back to strength my powers had amplified. I could feel people from at least a mile, and accurately guess who they were and what they were doing and feeling. I'd also figured out how to turn off the sensors after an embarrassing nighttime sweep of the bedrooms. Right now they were very excited and very much trying to hide something. But something good.

I hurried through the shower and out to the living room, where everyone was gathered. "Happy Birthday!" they chorused.

Coulson pulled out burgers from his favorite place and guacamole from mine, passing them around with chips and drinks. Everything was delicious, and everyone was happy. We laughed and fought jokingly over the music, throwing elbows for the food. It was how I'd always imagined a birthday party in a big family, but with more drinking games, which I won. And water balloons, which ended with all of us soaked to the bone. They'd outlawed powers after I started planting invisible overfilled balloons on the ceiling so Daisy could set them off remotely with a slight tremor. Daisy then left me to work with Lincoln, and Short People Team, me Jemma and May, kicked butt in the last round. Fitz and Mack lost hardest, since those two made more noise than a soaking wet elephant stomping through a field of Pop Rocks.

I don't know when they found the time to buy me presents, but somehow they did. Mack had designed me my own little RC car, a black hummer with delicate flames up the sides. Simmons gave me a fluffy sweatshirt and a fancy dress. Coulson gave me an original SHIELD badge given out by Peggy Carter to the first agents. May gave me a gray camo tank top with a pocket for concealed carry and a couple good books. Fitz gave me a cell phone and a polaroid camera, which I immediately used to take a picture of all of them. Lincoln gave me charcoal pencils and a sketchbook. Apparently he used to draw and he thought I'd benefit from learning. From Daisy I got my favorite present, a simple gold bracelet with "Freddie Leopold Johnson, aos. Warrior of peace." engraved on the inner edge.

Warrior of peace. I liked the sound of that.

The day after my party Coulson sent me on my first undercover op for SHIELD. We'd been hearing rumors of a college kid distributing fish oil pills contaminated with terrigen. While I hadn't found him yet, I was taking cool classes like psychology and chemistry, since I was signed up to major in chemical engineering. My roommate Stephanie loved the little stress toys I made her, usually little gel tangles with calming chemicals that seeped into your skin.

Tonight Stephanie and I were going to a party on the beach thrown by my top suspect. Whether through invisibility or healing I wasn't sure, but I'd discovered how to temporarily make my scars go away. Stephanie and I had gone shopping after psych one day and bought me party clothes. Apparently I was abnormally muscular, so according to her I "had" to show off my abs. I didn't know anything about this stuff, so I trusted her opinion. Which landed me in a short spandex skirt and a heavily padded bikini top, with sparkles in my hair, around my eyes, and dusted all over my skin. I had to admit, I looked good.

My heels stuck in the sand of the private beach. This was a rich kid party, and my eyes swept the crowd for drugs. Instead I found the host, watching me greedily. Behind him stood a friend of mine, rolling his eyes. Sam hated parties, but we dragged him out. Sadly, I had to pick work first, and I smiled at Jeremy, the host.

"Hey Jeremy, is this your house?" I grabbed a shot of tequila off a passing tray, downing it and leaning in close to him. "Anybody home?"

"My dad's in Vegas for the week." He grabbed the tray, holding it out. I drank a few more, until I was tipsy enough he'd believe someone of my size to be crazy drunk.

My stomach twisted at his revolting smile, but I batted my eyelashes and ran my hand over his chest, casually undoing the buttons on his stupid preppy shirt. "Think maybe I could see inside?"

Jeremy took my hand and led me up a path, already panting. God, what an entitled douchebag. The house was incredible, three stories tall, wraparound porch and balconies, and the entire top floor was glass. Glass walls, glass tables, glass fish tank kitchen island, glass ceiling. The view was incredible, miles of ocean in back and miles of city in front. The city lights looked like fallen stars, and the sky itself glowed a dull orange. For one dizzying moment it seemed the air and the ground had switched places.

I shoved away my excitement, feigning boredom. He looked nervous when I didn't react, and offered me a drink. "Is that all you've got?" I asked, looking bored and disappointed.

"Wait here." After a minute he returned, holding out a bottle of pills. Just as I'd suspected, he was the supplier. I could feel how much he wanted me to be impressed, and how much he wanted me. It was disgusting. "It's a new kind of acid, gives you this crazy fucking trip. Feels like you got super strength and like you're super fucking fast."

That wording was wrong. "Does it make you super fast?"

"Nah, but fuck it feels like it." Jeremy leaned in drunkenly. "It feels great to fuck on this."

"Sorry, I don't do drug dealers. I do report them though, so have fun in prison."

"You little bitch." He stumbled toward me as fast as he could, but I easily sidestepped and pushed him headfirst through the glass wall into the kitchen. My heels kept me easily above the glass shards. Swaying, he lurched toward me again. I twisted, snapping a side kick to his chest and sending him crashing into the fish tank, knocked out cold.

Once the fish were all safely in cups of water, I carried him outside to the bus, which luckily contained a cop in the third seat back. "This guy tried to give me drugs and attacked me when I said no. I knocked him out, but he'll wake up soon. Name's Jeremy Foyer, he's a college student." I saluted the cop, turning and disappearing the second I was out of his sight.

I updated the case file on my way back to the party to look for Stephanie. Instead I found Sam. "Where'd you go? You and Stephanie are like the only reason I'm here, and she went home with some guy right after you disappeared."

"I knew Jeremy was dealing drugs so I got him to admit it and then I turned him in to the cops."

"No way. He would've fought you."

"I knocked him out."

"Oh my god, you're incredible!" Sam smiled tentatively, and I could tell he wanted to kiss me. To my own surprise, I wanted him to. I pulled him in, crashing our lips together and winding my arms around his neck.

Sam was intoxicating. I pulled him closer, and his hands ran down my back, making me shiver. Happiness and desire pulsed through his aura.

Instinctively I pulled away, searching for that familiar aura I'd sensed. Daisy and Lincoln stood by the bar, grinning like little kids on Christmas morning. Lincoln raised a glass to me in a "cheers" motion.

"Sam. that's my sister and her boyfriend." He released me quickly, turning to give them a sheepish wave. "I've gotta go with them. See you around?"

"Yeah." He looked surprised and a little hurt. "I'll call you later."

I glanced at Daisy, who held up her wrist. The watches. I hadn't noticed mine going off, but that meant a mission. "I'm gonna be busy with them tonight, and probably tomorrow. I'll call you when I can, okay?"

"Okay, I get it. Have fun with them." Sam trudged off dejectedly. I guess he wanted to talk sooner, but I'd probably heal someone tonight and be in the hospital, so there was nothing I could do about it.

"Secret Warriors?" They nodded. "Why? Where's the rest of the team?"

"Captured. A telekinetic took the base." Lincoln answered as we headed back to the plane. "Sorry to pull you, but we saw you'd closed the case."

"Saving the family is way more important anyway." I sat down, trying to cover my now visible scarring. The whip marks down my back typically freaked people out. "You guys bring my gear?"

"Yeah, but it'd be funnier to watch Fitz's heart attack if he saw you in that," Lincoln teased, tossing me my suit.

"We'll infiltrate, you sneak in and find our team. Turn them all invisible and hide, get them out if things go bad for us," Daisy ordered. "Everyone clear on their jobs? Good, now we can talk about what's really important. Who was that guy?"

"Sam. He was in my psych class," I told her as I changed. "He's training to be a therapist. He wants to help people, and maybe teach in the mornings. You'd like him. Although he's very peaceful, so I don't know how he'd feel about you all. Or me. I can't see him again, can I?"

"I'll make sure Coulson gives you time off for him. It took you months to even touch knees with us on the couch, but him you'll make out with? He must be a good guy."

"Yeah. Speaking of, anybody have a mint? I'd love to not smell like tequila when we get there."

I talked to Elena as we flew, wondering at how quickly she'd picked up English. We spoke a mix of the two languages, and Joey listened nervously. Lincoln and Daisy did their best to stay with us. Because I'd had an Italian babysitter as a kid, they said I spoke with an "adorable" accent, somewhere between English, Spanish, and Italian when I spoke the latter two. I could stay in just one, but both assured me I sounded very musical this way.

When Daisy passed out parachutes I started to panic. I crammed wax in my ears, then snapped on headphones. The wax just dulled the sounds, but with music on I could hear nothing else. Daisy pumped up the others with I flicked to a good playlist.

A song by one of my favorite bands playing, I felt a little better. Still, the idea of jumping… I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking my head violently as she opened the door.

"I'll land the plane, then sneak in," I yelled, ripping off the parachute. "I… I can't…" Panic jumbled my words, looking out on the open sky and feeling the wind. My breath came in ragged pants, and I'd lost all control. Terror struck as Daisy jumped, and I fell, scrambling backward to the cockpit.

Once the chutes had all opened, I piloted the jet away. My hands shook so hard I had to let it do an autopilot landing. Running helped me calm down, but shame took the place of fear. I couldn't jump. Not even when it meant saving my family. At least I could save them this way and make up for it.

I got in easily, leaving all the doors open behind me so the others would have an easy way. Near the center of the base I stopped, closing my eyes and sweeping every room. They were locked in a closet, with someone unknown trying to break in. May was down, hurt worse than I'd ever felt her. The rage from that was enough to let me reach out and kill the guy, just as Elena and Joey got to the door. The team safe, I focused on the people around me. If I could hurt from a distance…

Reaching out, I began picking people off one by one.

Something metal smashed across the back of my skull, sending a starburst of pain through my head. I crashed to my knees. The lights flickered, and whoever it was clocked me again. The lights went out.

"Tu… esta… muy bonito."

"No. remember the rules of conjugation, and feminine masculine. bonita," I reminded Mack as patiently as I could.

He looked at the open book on his lap, confused. "So I said "You're a very pretty boy"?"

"Technically you called her very tuna fish. At least you've got the difference between ser and estar now."

"Ser?"

"Oh dear god." Both our exasperation was tangible, filling the living room.

"Look, this is a sweet gesture, but let's go back to the basics. How do you tell her you love her?"

"Me amo." I rubbed my eyes in frustration, and he looked hurt. "That's not it?"

"You just said you love yourself. _Te_ amo." I flipped absentmindedly through a World War One photo book Coulson had loaned me. It was actually very interesting, but I couldn't focus.

"Freddie, what's up? You seem distracted." Mack put aside his notebook with great relief. "If you don't wanna teach me, I can ask-"

"No, no it's not you. It's not the Spanish, it's just, it's nothing. Y hablo en Espanol." He looked back in his notebook, and this time the relief was mine. Something was wrong. It was Daisy. She didn't feel right; she felt sick, sick and dopey, like she'd been overwhelmed by dopamine.

"Freddie?" May called. "You wanna talk to me?"

I left Mack to his learning and joined her in the doorway. "Daisy's sick. I don't know what it is, but there's something wrong with her."

May's whole demeanor changed, her face going slack and pale. "We need to tell Coulson _right now_. You're certain?"

"Yeah. Should I tell her-"

"No!" She grabbed my arm, steering me into Coulson's office. Once I'd told him too, he looked just as shaken.

"I've felt it before. The sickness. It was there when we infiltrated the base." They looked at each other as though their worst fear had been realized. "I think someone else there was infected. I'm not sure though, I got knocked out before I got the time to hone in on it."

"Was it another Inhuman?"

"Not one I know."

"We need to confine Daisy without her knowing we suspect her," May suggested, locking the door to her office. "Maybe if she thinks we suspect someone else. Freddie, she's been infected by Hive. She's under his control."

"I was the only other one who was alone on that base. You know I'm not infected because I'm telling you, but she doesn't know that." My plan was probably gonna get me killed, so I decided not to tell them all of it. "Say you're afraid I've been infected because I was the only one alone, tell her she's the only one you can trust right now and she needs to put all of us in containment, and go herself just in case. Once she's locked in you let me out, I'll work with Fitz to reprogram the doors. She wrote the code for their locks, you really think they'll keep her in?"

"What if she gets out before you're finished?" May switched out her sidearm for an icer laying on the table. I knew what she was thinking. She couldn't kill her. Honestly, I had no idea whether I could either. A year ago, definitely, but now… I'd become weak here. Mostly in a good way, but could I do what had to be done?

It didn't matter. That wasn't the plan anyway. I picked up May's sidearm. "Then I'll be waiting."


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

It all went according to plan, and soon enough I was with Fitz in the lab. I felt bad for locking up Lincoln, Elena, and Joey too, but Fitz assured me it was a good plan. Coulson had May sit with us, but she got annoyed with Fitz and my Arabic. He needed the practice. And it took his mind off Daisy. May kept a close eye on the video monitor of Lash's containment, so she was the first of us to notice when the screen beside it revealed Daisy's empty room.

"Stay right here. I've got this." Neither protested when I barged out, but Fitz was mostly just confused.

Daisy would kill Malick first, so that bought me some time. In the main hangar, I apologized profusely before knocking out an agent. When Daisy opened the door, I was standing over him.

"You can take me to Grant?! Please! I need him! You and Grant, you're my family!" I cried desperately. "Please don't leave me here alone! I want to be part of the hive!"

She nodded understandingly, sending me outside to wait for her. Then she wrecked the base. My heart broke when the ceiling collapsed on Coulson. Here I was with all these powers, so powerless. If I healed him she'd know I was still SHIELD. His leg throbbed in agony, and I had to pull back into myself to stop from healing him.

Daisy took me straight to Grant. Hopefully Fitz had found my note by now and was tracking us by the chip I'd put in my arm. This was where it got dangerous. I asked to speak to Hive alone, and he gladly led me into another room.

"Grant should remember that I abandoned him, and if you're him in any way I want to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry because I'm still not here for him, but for Daisy. He knows how special she is, how special she can make you feel." He nodded. His aura was dizzying, because it shifted between so many identities. Now it leaned toward Grant, but the input from the others was giving me a splitting headache. "And Grant, you know what I'm capable of. You're my S.O. Grant. Maybe we can find a way to get back to where we were before, but for now, if you need to, I'm willing to be reset. I know I don't deserve forgiveness, but you always taught me it was something a person can earn. I'm willing to try, if you'll let me."

"Interesting. You've changed, Jamie. More open." His identity shifted to something old and slightly feral. "Grant cared for you, but not enough to forgive you. But I am not Grant, and you are one of us."

Hive reached out, his hands dissolving and stretching forward until they entered my eyes and nose and mouth and flooded my mind. They were alive, little mites that made up his body.

Hive filled my body with liquid sunlight. He didn't control my actions, but I wanted to please him. It took every ounce of strength I had to resist the urge to tell him about my tracker. I was loyal to him, yes, but I also wasn't going to abandon SHIELD.

I was still myself, more so than Daisy. Hive took broken creatures and gave us a family and a sense of belonging that we craved. Maybe it wasn't always for the best, but I'd always had that. Daisy spent more years than I've been alive searching, and she'd found SHIELD so recently it wasn't hard for Hive to dredge up that loneliness. Hive made me feel great, but Daisy had made me feel better.

Hive didn't trust me, he didn't like when I corrected him for calling me Jamie, he didn't like that I tried to talk Daisy out of her self destructive decisions, he didn't like that I didn't want to help bring in Lincoln. He knew I'd done espionage before, so he assigned me Daisy's job for the Rising Tide, right down to the van. I was supposed to track potential and current Inhumans and bring them to him.

Hacking bored me, but at least cafe food was good. I was "following a lead", sitting in a Panera eating macaroni. My lead was totally false, since the man with the Inhuman daughter was most definitely just dead, being 93 and all. I'd have to check his house at some point, but he'd vanished two weeks ago and it was too nice a day to deal with a body that long dead. My arm ached where my tracker had been cut out. An ass who called himself Hellfire had noticed the lump and sliced it out with a kitchen knife, and he'd definitely torn the muscle. Jerk. Of course, before that I'd already hated him. He hit on Daisy. But then so did Hive. Which was part of why he trusted me that I'd really come just to stay with her. He understood how magnetic she was.

"Shadow, you copy?"

"Again, Giyera, it's a phone call. If I pick up, I copy. And for the last time, it's Freddie," I sighed. He wasn't as bad as Hellfire, but it annoyed me enough to ruin my peaceful meal. "What's up?"

"We need you." Shouts and bangs rang out in the background. "Come back and help Radcliffe with his findings. Today. I'll send you our coordinates."

"I already know where you are." It didn't matter, since he'd already hung up. Giyera reminded me of a kid playing spy, using every cliche in the book.

Once I'd paid and driven the van back to the village Hive bought, bours away, I went to find the others. They were in an emptied out shipping warehouse. Daisy was terrifyingly pale and holding hands with Hive. I shuddered. Daisy never would have held his hand if she didn't have to. She'd lost too much blood. I was already too late, I discovered when they opened the crate. Melted beings who ran about as Hive ordered spewed forth. Hive called them his children. He and Daisy's. And then it all made terrible sense, why Daisy had lost blood, how Hive was making them.

He told Daisy he needed the rest of her blood. And she agreed.

It was Anna all over again, like I was a passenger in my own body, unable to stop the hurt around me. Not anymore. I was a healer. I am a healer.

Like a vase fallen from a table, Hive's already weak control over me shattered. He couldn't tell because his mites were still in my head. They fought for power, but I had them locked down.

"I'll do it." I stepped forward, grabbing Daisy's arm so I could hold her up. "You brought me here to help in the lab, let me take her blood. I can make her comfortable, and I wanna help. I haven't done anything useful yet and I want to contribute."

"You may. Watch Radcliffe, don't let him experiment."

I agreed, leading Daisy and the scientist into the little room with a computer. Radcliffe sat in front of it and watched me suspiciously. I ordered Daisy to watch him and left, going to a nearby house and grabbing all the blankets they had. Safely in a linen closet, I pulled out my phone and called Fitz.

"They're gonna kill Daisy Fitz I can't let them but I can't stop them and keep my cover to protect her." My words jumbled together and I forced myself to take a calming breath. "Oh, by the way, I heal from Hive's control. I'm pretending I don't so I can keep Daisy safe but they're going to drain her blood. Now that I've reactivated my phone you track it and attack. I swear it's not a trap. No matter what I'm going to have to hurt her. Please believe me. I can stall for maybe four hours, maximum, and then I'll be attacking Hive. I hope you're there, but if you're not, know I love you. Tell the team I love them and thank you, and them, for all you've done for me."

I hung up before the goodbye got too sad, but it still made me blink tears from my eyes. It was a just in case, because if I fought Hive I would lose. If it meant saving Daisy, I was willing to try and deal with whatever he threw at me.

With my giant stack of blankets in hand, I returned to Daisy. The blankets q went on the floor like a nest, which I put Daisy in, arranging it so there was a space for the equipment. She protested, but I was stronger than her.

"You know what you're doing?" Radcliffe asked as I gently scrubbed her inner elbow.

"I'm not Hellfire, I have experience," I muttered. "I've been in this business longer than you. Daisy, relax. Lean back against the wall. Don't be afraid, I'm going to take care of you."

I smoothed the hair back from her forehead and kissed it lightly. She'd saved me, and it was time I returned the favor. But she couldn't know I was going to try or she'd stop me. Keeping her alive had to become a beneficial situation for Hive. For now I had to take her blood so Radcliffe didn't suspect anything, so I slid the needle into her arm and started the flow. Daisy tried to stand up and go to the computer to hack into SHIELD, but I held her down and made her let me do it. Radcliffe moved next to her as I began.

"They said you're a scientist. How would you improve the primitives?" He hopped onto the table beside me, lost in thought. "I'm thinking we need to purify the blood, extract the GH formula. Problem is, I don't know how to do that."

"Hive says they're what he wants, so don't change them," I responded, too focused on my typing to try for a solution. Once I'd made quite a hassle for Fitz, I moved back to Radcliffe. "Wouldn't it make more sense to keep her alive and take what we can every day? We'd get more blood that way."

"It would take too long to regenerate. Maybe if we could expedite the healing process, but that's impossible."

"No Freddie," Daisy ordered, already concerningly pale and shaky. "You can't heal my blood."

"I can try. It would double the regeneration speed, so Hive would still get the amount he asked for in the time he asked. And you'd live to fight another day. I see no downside."

"I forgot, you're the healer." Radcliffe cackled and clasped his hands together. "Can you heal artificial flesh? Coulson's hand for example."

"Any time now Freddie," Daisy groaned. I knelt beside her, stopping the blood flow long enough to switch in a new container and give her some juice. She was too weak to hold it, even after I took half her pain onto myself. "I'm fine."

"I've never tried," I answered Radcliffe. "My family never wanted me to hurt myself to help them. Keep the sponge moving Daisy, flip it over. Again. Again. Radcliffe, make sure she can move it. Give her juice. I'm going to take the blood to Hive."

"You're leaving me with him? Thought you were taking care of me," she teased weakly.

Looking at her on the floor like that, I couldn't stop myself from tearing up. I rushed from the room before they noticed I was crying, stopping in the hallway to lean on the wall. Pulling myself together had never been this hard, but she looked so helpless. Plus, she was willing to let me suffer to save her. Daisy was the one Coulson said couldn't stand to watch me die. She was one of the only people to ever take care of me, and it was selfish but I didn't want those roles reversed. Not like this. Not when she was only letting me care for her because Hive had messed with her head. By the time I calmed down and dried my tears, my sickly pale and shaking legs barely held me up. That wouldn't do for seeing Hive, so I concentrated on healing myself until I could walk and see normally.

"Her blood, sir. Wouldn't it make more sense, respectfully, for me to split the pain with her and prolong her life span to get more blood?"

"What she has will suffice." He turned slowly, paying more and more attention to me by the second. Shit. "You. You feel different."

"Of course I do." I reached into my pocket without him noticing, turning my phone on again like I'd texted Fitz I would do when I was going to attack. "You're in some part Grant. You're probably remembering me as Jamie, and I'm different now."

"No. You're not part of the Hive anymore. How did you deceive me?"

He reached out, the mites launching toward me. Instinctively, I threw up my hands. A wall of obsidian pain appeared in front of me. Hive attacked, fists moving almost too quickly for me to keep up with. An explosion rocked the building, letting me take the upper hand in the fight. I threw up my pain shield every blow he tried to land until I was fighting wreathed in twisting tendrils of darkness. The team burst inside, stopping short when they saw me. I screamed at them to get Daisy, and Coulson and Lincoln took off where I pointed.

"Yahtzee." His face changed minutely, and I knew he hadn't meant to say it. That wasn't Hive. It was my inside joke with Grant, whenever we scored a hit on each other. Yahtzee. Grant was still in there, and maybe so were his weaknesses.

I raised my guard so he would swing low and I could flip over his arm, catching it in a cartwheel away from here. We had to move. This time he went high and fast, so I ducked one fist and caught the other, which I knew Grant would use to pull me back against him and snap my neck. Instead he knocked my feet out from under me so I went sprawling. Twisting into a handstand, I donkey kicked him in the back, sending him down too and doing a back handspring off his body to stand. I retreated backward up the steps, periodically blasting him with shards of hurt to keep his focus on me. The team raced quietly up behind us, Coulson and Lincoln holding Daisy up between them and Fitz with an icer pointed at Radcliffe.

I pretended to be backed into a corner at the highest level of the warehouse, looking around like I was panicking and then finding the way out. Just the way he'd taught me. I grabbed Hive as he lunged and smashed him through the wall. He grabbed the edge of the opening and threw himself back at me as the team filled the other end of the room. I kicked Hive square in the chest, sending him back away from the hole. I kept my eyes on him but stepped backward slowly until the wind tore at my back.

The room stopped.

"Jamie," Grant called. Then Hive took over again. "I won't catch you this time. I should've let you fall."

No. I thought I'd deserved to die then, but now I knew that was wrong. My scales were balanced. Hive, Grant, whoever he was, he'd done so much evil. Daisy couldn't stand without Lincoln because of him, something inside Simmons had been broken by him, Fitz had been hurt over and over, Coulson had lost his righteousness, May had become even more closed off, the Inhumans were all in danger. Not to mention what he'd done to me.

Grant made me a sad little soldier instead of getting me mental help, he'd brainwashed me and made me do terrible things, he gave me to people who he knew would hurt me and left me alone the second a better opportunity came up for him.

Grant deserved to die. And so did Hive for what he'd done to Daisy. They deserved worse than death. I stretched out my hands, healing Daisy and reaching out with all the pain I'd ever known, pouring it into Hive's mind the way he'd done to us. Rage kept me standing even as my eyesight and hearing flickered along with the lights, the power surging from my hands too strong to be contained. All my hurt ran him through, but the others were suffering as the darkness filling the room lashed at them. I drew their sufferings in, physical and emotional, and concentrated it all on the now shattered Hive. I did to Grant what he did to me, the worst pain imaginable. Years of brainwashing and memory crashed over him until I was free of all the darkness in my soul.

I was made of light.

But my team was hurting. My family was still suffering. I stepped over Grant's broken body so nothing but empty space divided us. Their eyes were full of broken promises as I reached out while my vision faded, pouring all my love over them. Joy wound around them, memories of them protecting me, my Star Wars marathon with Fitz, my birthday, all the long talks with Daisy when I was on the run, Devin buying me ice cream after a bad day, Grant buying me dinner after my first successful mission, Daisy giving me my badge and my room, training with Mack and Bobbi and May. i wrapped them in all the good I had left. Which was all I had left.

Maybe I can die.

I crashed to the floor. The team rushed forward and my ears finally stopped ringing. I was empty of all the good and the bad. A clean slate. And my fresh life would begin and end with dying for those I love. I couldn't think of a better way to go.

I could feel myself. I am good.

As a single tear rolled calmly down my face, I smiled serenely at Daisy. She clutched me desperately. My last bit of happiness, of anything, I gave to she who had restored mine, and with that I slipped away slowly to the music of May pulling her away, telling her the words she thought she needed to hear.

 _"Let the girl go."_


End file.
